Summer of 1992
by Skylar Datenshi
Summary: (This is the sequel to The Proud and Noble Black. Please read that first.) As the daughter of Bellatrix Black, Meissa has to deal with many challenges. With friends like Daphne Greengrass and Hermione Granger, Meissa's journey has only just begun. But can she survive one summer with Hermione's family? What secrets does Meissa have to uncover from within the Black family?
1. The Room

_**Hi everyone. Sorry that I was MIA for about a month or so. Things have been rather hectic lately and believe it or not I actually had a writers block for awhile. But now I'm back with a story for ya'll.**_

 _ **This will obviously take place in the summer between Year 1 and Year 2. Welcome back readers and I hope you continue following the story.**_

 _ **New readers, if you haven't checked out The Proud and Noble Black I would suggest doing that otherwise this ficlet won't make much sense.**_

 _ **Without further ado, onwards with the story!**_

 _ **Chapter 1 - The Room**_

June 24th, 1992 - 7 Days before Meissa's 12th birthday  
Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

Meissa is stunned speechless by what she is seeing. The room stretched the entire length of the third floor - which is considerably large since the manor was large enough to play host to the Weasley family and their extended family. The ceiling seemed tall to the soon to be twelve years old girl, large enough to fit a full-grown mountain troll. The purpose of the room is readily apparent to her with one side of the room covered with various weapons of the medieval sort. Swords of varying length and sizes decorated the wall along with maces, spears, bladed spears she has no name for, and so on.

In the apparent center of the room was a large circle, large enough for a duel to be held comfortably within, drawn in with white paint. Stepping up to the circle she carefully toes the line, coming to the conclusion that its dormant for the time being. Reassured that she wouldn't be zapped if she crosses the line she returns to her exploration.

Opposite to the wall of weapons bookshelves lined the entire length of the room, each shelf burdened with books, thick and thin. Out of curiosity she took a closer look at the books and found that they dealt with many different topics. It doesn't take her long to realize that the books are organized into different categories. One entire bookshelf had tomes on healing, from the easiest healing spell to the most complicated ones - including ones that need some kind of elaborate ritual. Peeking into the tomes told her as much with the long list of ingredients. Another shelf had books on the various branches of combat magic - these she plans on looking at in depth when she gets the chance. She has no doubt that most of the magic in those texts will be banned or considered Dark Arts by the Ministry.

But her policy about the intent of magic is still strong so she has every intention of learning the different branches of magic for the sole purpose of learning self-defense. Some magic she knows will be too corrupting for her to even consider - those she will study up on but will refrain from actually practicing.

She was literally about to pull off a tome from the shelf when she hears a sound that prompts her to pause for a moment. A look around does not reveal to her the immediate cause so she turns away from the bookshelves, frowning to herself as she tries to figure out what made it in the first place. The door was still shut and she can see that there is no one else in the room with her. Unsure of what could've made the noise she turns towards the last wall she has yet to look at.

She can see that it is lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves, yet its shelves are not burdened with heavy tomes. Curious she walks over to the shelves, noticing that there is a table with a large half sphere object resting in the exact center. When she finally got close enough she could see that it is a metal basin set on a stone base to keep it from sliding freely on the table. White wisps rose from the basin and a small part of her cautioned from going any nearer to the table until she understands what she's looking at.

Meissa tilts her head to the side, squinting as she takes note of the markings on the basin. It takes her a moment to realize that the markings are runes but she cannot get a good look at them to determine what their purpose is. She's curious about the basin and its' contents but a lifetime of being around her godfather and his various potion experiments has taught her to be wary of unknown things. So she walks around the table and goes to the shelves, finding that instead of books the shelves are decorated with potion bottles of varying sizes and shapes. Each one is labeled with a date. The one thing each bottle has in common was a name.

Bellatrix Black

Each one has her mother's name, written in a style that seems far cleaner compared to her own. The room was vast and the shelves spanned the entire width of the wall opposite of the doors, tightly pressed together to the point she cannot see the wallpaper behind them.

"Bellatrix Black…" she mutters softly, looking at the bottle in front of her, filled with the same white wisps she saw in the basin.

She cannot fathom why there are rows of bottles with her mother's name and a date. Meissa turns away from the shelves and noticed for the first time that there is a bottle sitting on the table. Curious she picks it up and saw that is empty with only a label on the glass body reading: Bellatrix Black, February 20, 1981.

Puzzled as to importance of the date on the bottle she sets it back on the table. With a frown, she lifts up the family wand in her hand and pokes the silvery-white wisps with the tip, noting that they are neither gas or liquid. She notes that the surface of the stuff began to swirl about faster as if excited or eager. Yet somehow they stayed close to the basin as they danced in the air. Within she can see the mesmerizing dance within the basin until she decides that it must be safe enough.

She prods the surface once more and, as the fast swirling began once more, sees that the silvery-white wisps has become transparent - it was like looking through a glass window. Curious she leans in and sees a woman with long black unruly yet shiny hair, heavy-lidded eyes with long eyelashes, thin lips, and is wearing a black dress that falls down to her ankles and a black leather corset cinched tight around her chest.

Meissa is so distracted by what she is seeing she does not realize that she has lean in so far that her nose was close to touching the surface. Until, with an upsetting lurch, she finds herself thrown forward and falling into the basin. Startled she barely has time to think that she has messed up when she finds herself standing once more except she's no longer in the room on the third floor in Nigri Sanctuarium.

The woman is there, in front of her, so she walks to her - intending to ask her about where they are.

"Where-," she starts to say when she hears a baby's coo.

Not expecting to hear a baby she stops and takes in her surroundings. Realizing that she is in a nursery room. In the middle of the room is a baby's crib with dragons, broomsticks, and fairy figurines dancing about in small lazy circles above it. The walls are decorated with a forest scenery and the longer she stares the more she sees a magical creature lurking in the details of the forest.

The woman, she finally recognizes her as the woman from the portrait, bends over the railing of the crib. Her hand disappearing out of Meissa's view until she steps closer to the crib. Peering over the railing she sees a baby, at least seven months old, with a headful of dark brown hair and dark brown eyes.

" _Hello dearie,"_ the woman - in the same voice she hears from the portrait - greets the small baby, her fingers stroking the child's cheek. The baby, 'dearie', coos again and their limbs flails. Meissa watches this in awe as the woman gently catches the baby's hand, their tiny fingers instantly curling around a pinky. She sees a sad smile on the woman's face and finds herself wondering why.

She peers at the woman's face, trying to understand why she seems so sad. The woman's black eyes seem to glitter as she stares at the baby laying in the crib. "Who are you," Meissa mutters softly, leaning in closer out of curiosity. The Black heiress doesn't see anything that can help her identify the baby but the longer she stares the more she has a sense of familiarity. She feels like she should know who this baby is.

" _She is you,"_ she suddenly hears and it quickly reminds her that she is in an unknown situation. Whirling around she brings Morgen's wand up but finds no one there. Only the woman, who is still playing with the baby, and the baby in question.

"Where am I…"

" _You are in a memory."_

She looks around but sees that no one is there and it doesn't seem like the woman is the source of the voice - even if it does sound like her voice.

"How am I in a memory?"

" _The memory is currently contained in a Pensieve. Once inside the Pensieve you are able to view the memory in question as if you were there."_

Realization quickly dawns on her and she turns around in a full circle before she takes a look up towards the ceiling only to find it to be a reflection of the outside. "Oh," she mutters to herself. "So this is what it's like to be in one."

She shakes her head and looks back at the scene of the woman and the baby. She remembers, while looking at the baby, that the voice says she is the baby. "Who is she?" she asks, peering at the woman.

The voice doesn't answer this time but instead she sees the woman reach into the crib and lift the baby out and into her own arms. _"Dearie,"_ the woman whispers, stroking the reddish brown hair, _"I will always love you."_

She frowns as she watches the woman and how she cradles baby Meissa to her. Meissa couldn't accept that this baby is her. As she looks on the baby starts to fuss and the woman just starts to rock her, humming softly.

" _Hush, little baby, don't say a word,"_ the woman starts to sing, the tenor of her voice ringing in her mind. _"Mumma's gonna buy you a phoenix bird. And if that phoenix bird won't sing Mumma's gonna buy you a serpent ring."_ The baby stops fussing and just like the older Meissa, starts to listen attentively. _"And if that serpent ring turns brass Mumma's gonna buy you a two way looking glass. And if that two way looking glass gets broke Mumma's buy you a invisibility cloak. And if that invisibility cloak isn't impressive Mumma's gonna buy you a shiny new Pensieve."_

Meissa feels as if her head was bouncing the words around, knocking loose memories of this lullaby being sung to her. Her lips forming the next words in time with the woman. "And if that Pensieve doesn't show you what you want, Mumma's gonna buy you your very own wand," she whispers along.

"And if that little wand doesn't spark," they sang together. "Mumma's gonna buy you a thestral and cart. And if that thestral and cart fall down, you'll still be the sweetest little lady in town."

Meissa felt stunned. She didn't know where that memory of the song came from but now, it feels as if she has known the song her entire life. So absorbed with the revelation of somehow knowing this song her entire life she had not noticed the woman returning the baby to her crib. The next time she is aware of her surroundings she finds herself no longer in the unfamiliar room with the crib in the center but in the room on the third floor. This time the woman is staring directly at her.

" _Meissa,"_ the woman starts in a tone that commanded her full attention. _"If you're watching this… well… it means something has happened to me."_ Meissa frowns at the woman, trying to understand what is happening. _"It is currently 1980. It has been seven months since your birth and… you are the best thing that has ever happened to me."_ Realization dawns as she stands there, staring at the raven haired woman's features. Seeing for the first time that she truly does look like her mother. _"We have been at war since 1970… I'm sorry, dearie. If you're watching this then it's likely you are living in a world where my deeds in the war reflects on you."_

Meissa crosses her arms, unwilling to dwell on the memories of wizards and witches talking horribly of her mother.

She was seven

A witch was badmouthing her mother.

Her insides hurt. Froze. Then she felt red hot.

Pops.

Crashes.

Screams.

A bloody finger pointed at her.

 _You're just like her. A monster._

" _I don't know how long it has been since you last saw me,"_ the woman - her mother - continues, drawing her out of her thoughts. _"Hopefully we've had a long time together. But in case you didn't… In case I was taken away from you too early… The shelves contain copies of my memories. Things I hoped to one day teach you."_

She thinks about the shelves, of the bottles she has seen on them and realizes what they are for. Meissa presses her hand to her mouth, a ragged breath tearing through her as she sees a different side of her mother.

She _**cares**_.

"Mumma…" she whispers hoarsely as she drops to her knees, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

~MJB~

 _ **So... that just happened. Stay tune for the next chapter. Which may come out in two weeks. Depends on if I finish chapter five in that time.**_


	2. Questions

**_Hi everyone, I hope ya'll are having a good month so far. In any case, here's the next chapter. Please leave a review at the end, lemme know what ya'll wanna see the girls do once they're out in the muggle world._**

 _ **Chapter 2 - Questions**_

June 25th, 1992 - 6 Days before Meissa's 12th birthday  
Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

Meissa makes sure her uncle's too busy with his potions again before she slips away to head up to the third floor. She needs to talk to the portrait - to her mother. She has so many questions that she wants answered - questions she couldn't ask because Remmy popped her away when she started to have a break down in the room.

Discovering that her mother cared, cared enough to store away memories for her in the event of them being separated, was too much for her. She has always wondered, hoped, that her mother cared about her. That she is different from what everyone says she is.

She knows that her Aunt Narcissa is constantly telling her that her mother would love her, regardless of what she does but for the first time Meissa truly knows. She knows, from her mother's own words, how much she was cared for. It was the greatest gift she could ever get and it made her hate the fallen Dark Lord even more.

Half way up the stairs she hears the familiar greeting that has her dashing the rest of the way until she's standing in front of the portrait of her mother. Now that she knows she can see the similarities.

She has so many questions but the first one that leaves her was 'why'.

Bellatrix looks at her for a moment before sighing. "You need to be more specific dearie."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Bellatrix looks at her for a long moment before sighing. "You weren't ready."

"I wasn't ready?!" she shouts at the portrait. She winces when she realizes how loud she got and waited, staring at the stairs, for a minute before relaxing. She forgot that there's four floors separating her from her godfather. The only way for her uncle to hear her was if the entire building shook - which, if she thinks about it, would take a lot of magic. "That's how you excuse not telling me that you're my mother?"

Bellatrix crosses her arms, leveling a look at Meissa that has her drawing back.

Was this what Meissa's victims feel when she glares at them?

No wonder they always back off when she glares at them.

"I am not obligated to tell you things that I do not deem you ready to know," Bellatrix states sternly.

"But… why," Meissa whispers, looking away. "I don't have any pictures of you… I've looked all over the place and I've never see any pictures of you."

"I know," Bellatrix sighs as she inclines back in the one chair painted in her portrait, one of her legs thrown lazily over the arm rest. "If I have to make any guesses, Cissy hid them."

"But why?"

"Because of you."

"Me?"

"Yes."

Meissa frowns at her mother. "But why?" she asks again, getting a look from her.

"You're a smart girl, you figure it out."

Meissa frowns at her again before she looks at the door. She felt tempted, like the answers she has been looking for hides behind this door. She looks at the portrait to see if she may enter the room but finds that she is gone. Curious about where she could've gone she turns and tests the doorknob, smiling to herself when she finds that it is not locked.

She enters the room, allowing the door to close behind her, and made a beeline for the Pensieve. Meissa feels a need to know if there is anything else to know from the memory that she had viewed the day before. So she checks the memory in the Pensieve before she lowers her head into the Pensieve.

She closes her eyes to the lurch, once again barely having time to regret her actions when she finds herself standing in the nursery room. She listens to the lullaby once more, humming along to the lullaby and this time she sees her mother leave the room, following her out and down a familiar corridor.

They're on the second floor, not too far from where her bedroom is outside the memory. But she has never seen any nursery when she explored the second floor. Puzzled and curious about this she makes a note to look for the nursery at another time. Instead she focuses on following her mother up the stairs and into the room. Noticing that the portrait of her mother was not hanging across the hall from the door. Which means that sometimes between the memory being extracted and her mother being sent to Azkaban her mother had the time to get her portrait done.

Upon entering the room she finds her mother looking at her once again, seemingly looking at her directly. She can see, now that she isn't distracted by the abrupt sight of being looked at, the sadness in her eyes. Sadness, regret, remorse - just about every word that can be used to describe the look on her mother's face.

She listens to her mother express the purpose of the room to her until she realizes that she has gotten to the point where she had to leave the other day.

" _By default, the only bottles you will be able to see are the ones meant for every day events. In the event that I'm not there for… certain milestones, the bottles will hopefully serve as a guide,"_ Meissa's mother is saying as she steps up to her. Bellatrix turns and walks to the shelves in question, which contains no bottles as of yet.

Causing Meissa to wonder if the memory she is viewing is the very first memory? But that doesn't make sense, since Bellatrix said that the shelves contain copies of her memories. That would imply that she has been working on them for some time.

She watches as her mother taps the third shelf from the left and she stares as it shifts forward and then to the left, revealing an entrance. _"Behind this door will be the bottles containing spells, the correct wand movements, and the basic information you will need to perform the spell. Some of the bottles will contain spells that I would not recommend practicing on your own."_ Bellatrix pauses and Meissa walks closer to find her frowning as if in thought. _"The spell bottles that I would suggest having a partner around… I'll have to put a ward around them,"_ the woman mutters to herself.

Meissa isn't sure but seeing this side of her mother feels like a gut wrenching experience.

For so long her mother has been a faceless entity. She knows that she has been compared to her mother for years - many has cursed her for how similar she looks. But seeing her, in the memory, she can see how similar they are when she has her glamour earrings on. It makes her wonder though. Why would Aunt Cissy want her to look like a carbon copy of her mother?

She follows her mother into the secret room, her eyes widening at the sheer amount of bottles that sat upon the shelves. "Wow," she mutters to herself. "Why are there so many?"

" _I've been working on this for nearly two years now,"_ Bellatrix comments as she touches a shelf. _"Hopefully these will serve you well."_ Meissa moves closer to the shelf and sees that it has a label on the side. 'Martial Combat'. _"Every imaginable spell or technique that I know of are here. You're not obligated to learn each one, dearie, but they are here should you decide you wish to learn."_

Meissa looks at her mother, in awe of what Bellatrix has done for her.

" _This, of course, will not replace my absence in your life,"_ Bellatrix continues before she turns around to look at Meissa. Or it gives Meissa the illusion of being looked at. _"Meissa… my daughter… my one true heir… know that I am with you. Always."_

With those last words everything stilled before becoming dark and Meissa is left standing in what she can only believe to be the void. The end of the memory in the Pensieve.

Without something to distract her she is left to ponder the words of her mother.

Is there some kind of secret meaning behind them? Or are they meant to be taken at face value?

Unsure of what to think she looks up towards the ceiling, to the glass like ceiling and after a moment she feels another sickening lurch - her eyes instinctively closing to the sensation. When she felt solid ground underneath her once more she opens her eyes once more, the family wand's tip briefly touching the wisps before she manages to gather the wisps into the container.

She looks at the date labeled on the bottle, thinking to herself.

The year was important to her.

It was the year Voldemort died or disappeared. It was the year her parents left her life.

The month though. It tells her that she prepared, months before the downfall of Voldemort, of the potential defeat of the 'Dark Lord' and his Death Eaters. Everything her Aunt Cissy has told her of her mother contradicted this very theory. Her mother is either someone who cares very little about the safety and wellbeing of her family or she truly cares to the point of risking certain death if she succeeds.

She isn't sure but she has a feeling that this date is very important. Why else would her mother make a point to label the bottle? Except she couldn't ask her mother about it and she has a feeling that her mother wouldn't have told anyone about what she was planning. Which means… there is literally no one she can ask about the room.

Feeling as if she has lost the chance to understand her mother she turns and places the bottle on the shelf. Looking at the various bottles she could view she turns away, not feeling the need to select one or take a closer look at the labels.

She makes her way to the exit, her eyes distant as she ponders about her mother and her reasonings. Scarcely halfway to the door she hears a low chiming noise that causes her to pause. A look to her left ensured her that the weapons are not the source of the sound. She turns to her right and, to her amazement, she sees one of the tomes seemingly wiggling in its place on the shelf.

"What in Merlin's name," she mutters in disbelief, wondering to herself how she could have missed something like that before. Unless… unless this is the first time it has done this in her presence.

Unsure she slowly makes her way over to the bookshelf, drawing the family wand out. Common sense told her to make no skin contact with the tome in case it is cursed or bespelled. Trust in her mother has her reaching for the tome and, after a brief minute of an internal war, she touches the leather bound tome. Her fingers flinching back unbidden before she firmly told herself that nothing bad will happen. She grabs hold of the thick book, heaving a sigh of relief when nothing seemed to happen, and tugs it free from its spot.

She has to wrap her arms around the thick tome to keep from dropping it and carries it over to the nearby table. Careful to avoid damaging the book she sets it gently onto the ebony table before she starts to study her prize. She notes that the sound has stopped, believing to have ceased its call the moment she made contact with the spine of the tome.

She studies the cover, at the neat cursive that makes up the title.

 _The Life and Adventure of Otter and Friends_

Curious about this she opens the tome and finds the author to be Jehanna Morgen Rieger.

She has never heard of the family name, Rieger, so she figures that the family must be from another country at least. Making a mental note to search for the family later she turns the page once more before she sees the same neat cursive from the title.

 _To my little bright star, may this guide you through your life._

 _Love, mama_


	3. Reflections

_**A third chapter before the end of the month? Wow, I sure am spoiling ya'll! But then again the chapters are fairly short compared to my usual 10 page (on my laptop) chapters.**_

 _ **Please leave a review, let me know where I can improve and what ya'll like so far.**_

 _ **Chapter 3 - Reflections**_

June 29th, 1992 - 2 days before Meissa's 12th birthday  
Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

She has spent the past four days, since she discovered the tome, finishing up her summer homework and writing a letter. The letter itself took less than a few hours to finish and sent off with her godfather's owl, Hermes. With her homework completed and her letter written she knows she doesn't have much left to distract her from Rieger's book and the fact her birthday is only two days away is slowly starting to freak her out a bit.

Her birthdays have always been a source of tension for her. Her earliest memory of her birthday was with her Aunt Walburga. The embittered woman did nothing to celebrate her birthdays, often wallowing in her drinks and cursing her eldest while lamenting her youngest. She can recount the countless stories her aunt told of her two sons.

Sirius Orion and Regulus Arcturus Black.

She knows quite a lot about the eldest of the pair, not helped by the fact that he also happens to be part of the group responsible for making her godfather's years in Hogwarts miserable. One mention of Sirius' name would likely leave Uncle Severus in a dark mood for the entirety of the day if not the week. Meissa learned that fairly early on when she made the mistake of asking him about why Aunt Walburga kept ragging on about someone who has been disowned from the family.

In her opinion, her aunt shouldn't have been spending so much time tearing into a son she disowned.

"Meissa!"

She looks away from her desk, closing Rieger's book after marking her place.

"Meissa, come downstairs!"

It's her godfather.

She places the tome in a drawer before leaving the room, calling out to her uncle that she'll be there soon.

Navigating the manor always take a bit of effort since her room is on the second floor. The corridor her room is located in is locked behind a hidden door and to open the door she has to locate the constellation and tap the stars in the correct order. It's no different than the set up at the Malfoy Manor - it would be more accurate to say that her room at the Malfoy Manor was set up to be like her room in the Nigri Sanctuarium.

Once she has the door unlocked she shoulders it open enough for her to slip through before allowing it to shut behind her. Once she was past that obstacle she quickly walked over to the stairs, looking over the banister to peer down towards the floor below.

It does not take her long to locate her godfather and she sees that he is talking someone with long blonde hair.

"Aunt Cissy!" she calls down, recognizing the shade of blonde. Also, the only other adult she knows with blonde hair would be the Lord Malfoy and his hair is a few shades darker than her aunt's. She still finds it a bit amusing that someone from the Black family would have platinum blonde hair but she has learned early on not to make any comments about it.

Grandfather Cygnus has black hair, according to the portraits she has seen of him, and Grandmother Druella has dark brown hair. She'll need to investigate the family tree, on both sides, to discover where the blonde hair came from.

"Meissa," Narcissa greets, looking up at her goddaughter. "I see you're not ready."

She blinks and looks at her aunt in confusion. "Ready for what?"

Her aunt sighs - she's too far to hear it but she can see the actual movement of her aunt's chest - and shakes her head in disappointment. Her godfather gestures for her to come downstairs so she takes the quick journey down, hopping the last two steps as she smiles brightly at her aunt.

"Meissa," her aunt sighs, reaching up to brush back her goddaughter's wild auburn hair. "We're going to Diagon Alley for your birthday present, remember?"

"Oh," she mutters. "I thought you were jesting about that." She doesn't want to admit that she completely forgot about the plan. She's been absorbed in studying the books on runes and taking notes. Remmy has been the one to remind her to eat as well as supplying her with migraine potions before they start to get really bad. Remmy has always been one to take care of her out of all the house elves in the manor.

"I never jest about shopping," her aunt remarks in an offended tone, as if such a thought shouldn't have even crossed her mind. "Now, go and get ready. We'll leave in ten minutes."

"Yes, Aunt Cissy," she answers dutifully, well aware she shouldn't attempt to argue with her aunt about shopping.

She hurries up the stairs and back into her room, calling for Remmy once she is inside. With a crack the house elf is there, standing on her school trunk she had left at the foot of her bed.

"Mistress Meissa call? Remmy help!"

"Yes. Please make up an outfit for me to wear to Diagon Alley," she requests, opening her the small silver star shaped jewelry box to retrieve the raven feather shaped earrings. Placing them is relatively simple, even without a mirror - not that she wanted one in her room at all. After her eighth birthday she broke every single mirror she saw until her godparents finally saw that there is no point on repairing the mirrors if all she was going to do is break them. After that they removed all the mirrors in her room and the bathrooms.

Her aunt hasn't quite removed the mirrors from the room in the Malfoy Manor - at least, she hadn't since her last visit. So far she hasn't decided if it'd be safe to return there.

"Remmy done!" she hears the house elf exclaim, drawing Meissa from her thoughts. She looks over to her bed to find that Remmy has chosen her outfit. It consists of a pair of black slacks, a white silk button up shirt - she hadn't been aware of owning this particular shirt - and a black vest. It's an outfit she would be proud to wear at any time.

"Thank you Remmy. You chose well," she praises, watching as the elf wiggles her ears in glee. "Just pick out a c-," she stops when she sees a light summer cloak floating out of her cabinet. She rolls her eyes in amusement before she starts to change out her casual clothes.

She chucks off her soft t-shirt and shorts before getting dressed, making sure to tuck in the tail ends before she zipped up the pants. She picks up the vest before noticing that there's a subtle trace of what appears to be a floral design. The stitching is done in a few shades darker than the actual fabric so it makes it almost hard to detect it.

Once the vest is on and cinched up she turns towards Remmy. "How do I look?" she asks, making minor adjustments to the sleeves, straightening them out until the shirt and vest were sitting right.

"Mistress Meissa look amazing!" Remmy cheers before, with a snap of her fingers, the cloak zoomed over to Meissa. Used to Remmy's antics she already has her arms stretched out so it was easy for the cloak to slip onto her. Her black traveling cloak looks plain but the lining of the cloak consists of a silver velvet material.

It's one of her favorites to wear, her Aunt Cissy had to get it replaced since she outgrown her old one. A lot of her clothes had to be replaced since she outgrown them by a few inches. The rest of them has gotten a bit threadbare in some places.

She makes a note to herself to get some muggle clothes to replace her old ones since they're the only ones that are more than a few years old. The chances of getting her aunt to replace them are slim and she'd have to bother her godfather into taking her out or buying her some. At least before she heads over to Hermione's home for the month.

Hermione told her, before the great feast, to bring casual clothes. When she asked her to elaborate on that she was told explicitly to bring jeans and shirts that do not involve buttons. Unfortunately, that eliminates a lot of her wardrobe for consideration.

"Mistress Meissa!" Remmy exclaims, snapping Meissa out of her thoughts. She looks at the house elf, noticing that she's nervously wringing her hands together. "Mistress Narcissa says shop now."

Meissa grimaces as she realizes that she may have unintentionally been stalling by thinking random things.

With a frown to herself she heads back downstairs, her wild mane bouncing over her shoulders as she takes the steps by twos until she's finally on the ground floor. She gives her aunt a bright smile before blinking at her when the woman sighed and brushed back a stray strand of Meissa's hair.

"Did you brush your hair at all?"

"Um…"

Her aunt sighs and motions for Meissa to walk out the front door, telling her uncle to not expect them back until late.

~MJB~

Meissa is feeling pretty nauseated when they finally arrive at Diagon Alley, apparitions always make her just about ready to empty her stomach into the nearest bin. Once her stomach finally started to settle she looks at her aunt, wondering if they are going shopping for clothes.

"What are we doing today?" she finally asks when her aunt is less than forthcoming with their agenda.

"We're here to buy you a birthday gift… And it's time we find you a familiar," Narcissa remarks as she walks, scarcely looking at her niece to ensure she's being followed.

At the mention of a 'familiar', Meissa's brain skipped a second before she hurries to catch up with the older witch. "Really?" she asks excitedly.

"Yes. You're old enough."

"Why didn't I get one last year?"

"It's a tradition in the family," Narcissa answered simply.

"Draco got an owl," she reminds her aunt.

"He's the heir to the Malfoy line, not the Black line," Narcissa remarks drily.

She arched an eyebrow at her aunt. "But you're trying to educate him."

"You've noticed how well that has gone."

Meissa hummed thoughtfully, thinking about her cousin's behavior over the last year. His behavior was unbefitting for a Black, or rather her ideal of the Black family. She hasn't actually lived with a relative other than her Aunt Walburga when she was a child. Everything she has learned about the Black family she was taught by her Aunt Cissy and she still can remember her great-grandfather's words.

So maybe she should start a new tradition.

She already completed the paper works and they've been submitted to the Wizengamot so she's waiting until Gringotts find the signet ring. She'll also need to review the laws and traditions regarding the Major families. Preferably before she accepts the ring. Being in charge of the family estates, finances, and political stance will require a lot of her time.

She has every intention of changing the Black family's stance on certain things. Blood statuses being one of them.


	4. Shopping?

_**Hi everyone, hope ya'll are having a good month so far. The last time I updated this fic was back in the middle of August (What? Seriously? Wow ya'll are overdue for an update o.o) so I'll be uploading two chapters today as an apology.**_

 _ **The same drill follows. I do not own any characters unless you don't recognize them - in that case those are mine. Please leave a review or drop me a PM, lemme know what ya'll think!**_

 _ **C**_ _ **hapter 4 - Shopping?**_

June 29th, 1992 - 2 days before Meissa's 12th birthday  
Location: Diagon Alley

" _Come on!"_ the soon to turn twelve years old girl calls out to her aunt, dashing forward with an excited giggle. In a rare display of emotions she looks younger than ever, a heartwarming sight for the Lady Malfoy who is used to seeing the cold emotionless mask. Yet she cannot help but worry. She heard the childish tone in her niece's voice and knew what that meant.

She follows her young charge with ease, the usual crowd parting from the pair and allowing them to move freely. Her glacial blue eyes follow the giggling raven haired girl with well-practiced ease. Her niece, when she was much younger, was prone to running off without a care so it became a habit between Severus and herself to always keep an eye on their goddaughter lest they lose her to the afternoon shopping crowd.

Despite Meissa's excitement and repeated attempts to hurry her, Narcissa refused to move faster than an elegant walk. All around them the men, women, and children parted from the two, daring not to impede their walk. Moving around the pair as if they are a boulder in the river, creating the illusion that they are untouchable.

The raven-haired girl dashed here, there, everywhere without a care in the world, not realizing how much her unrestrained freedom is uncommon as children of her age are clutched close by their mothers. But regardless of which way she went she does not stray too far from her aunt, her excitement become more and more visible as they went through the shopping district. Bypassing the bookstore from which they've purchased many of her favorite reads, the wand shop where she received her first wand ever - a blackthorn solid wand that started out dark at the grip and gradually lightened to its white tip, twelve and a half inch long, with a phoenix feather core nestled within - and the apothecary her godfather visits occasionally for rare hard to find items that is not available at his preferred store. All of them important, but none of them are the reason why they are in Diagon Alley.

Her birthday is in a few days and after arriving home from Hogwarts her aunt had put a question to her - what would she like for her birthday. Like all times before she did not have an answer. It took her nearly four days for her to decide on a present she would like.

And so, they were in Diagon Alley.

"Meissa," she hears her aunt's careful, precise, voice over the noise of the afternoon crowd.

At the name she halts, her eyes glazing over for a moment as she stares at her reflection in a shop window. Narcissa frowns as she studies her goddaughter, taking note of what she's seeing before calling for her a second time. This time Meissa responds, her dark brown eyes clearing, and she walks calmly over to her aunt. Her hand slipping into the slightly bigger one.

Her eyes take note of the sign, 'Magical Menagerie', before she peers through the only window available to the public. She could see that one of the walls - the only one she could see from outside - was lined with cages, each filled with different creatures available for purchase. She could not make out what they were but she knew, that somewhere inside, was her familiar meant just for her.

She just has to find it.

"Ready?" she hears her aunt ask.

"Yes Aunt Cissy," she mutters, feeling distinctly NOT ready.

But they stepped through the door and all at once her nose was assaulted by the smell of all the animals jammed into one room. The wave of magic that washed over her told her stories, hinted that the owner and staff frequently used cleaning and air freshening spells to keep things tidy. But her nose told her that it was not enough. The stink of scats, unwashed animals, and various things she dared not try to identify overpowered her for a long moment.

What she heard, however, was worse. Her head felt like something was inside it and was trying to pound its way out. The hisses of the various snakes, squeaks of rats, screeches and hoots of owls, and the various sounds a cat can make all laid into her. The migraine that took root close her eyes and raise her hands to her ears, trying desperately and futilely to block out the sounds.

Her aunt, having predicted that this may happen, presses a thin glass vial to her niece's lips, no longer than the palm of her hand - filled with a light pink colored fluid. Without hesitation her niece parted her lips to the vial, tilting her head back as her aunt pours the drink into her mouth. Once every last drop was gone she switches the vial out for her wand and, with a wave, cast a spell to wrap her niece in a bubble to reduce the simulations she was receiving from being in the store.

She waits the first two minutes for her niece to relax, to drop her hands from her ears, before making a decision.

"Better?" she asks, her eyes searching her niece, taking in the squint in her eyes and how her niece's lips were pressed together into a thin line. The potion will take a bit more time to work, she concludes, but it would seem that the worse of the migraine may have been kept at bay with her foresight to have the potion on hand.

"A little," the raven-haired girl admits softly, dark eyes meeting glacial blue ones. "Can we stay?"

The blonde looks at her for a long moment before nodding. "Let me know if you need another dose," she informs her niece, waiting until she gets a nod of agreement before she allows Meissa to move away from her.

Meissa turns to the interior of the store once more - everything still muffled out because of the spell her aunt had cast - and looks around for a place to start. She sees the snakes stacked along one side of the room and decided she'll save them for last and turns to her right, which turns out to hold cages of owls with enough room for them to move about freely. Each one had a personality - some stared at her defiantly, some in curiosity, some just flat out ignored her. But she moved away from them, not quite feeling a pull towards them.

She sees a few cages containing other kinds of birds - she sees a raven but felt that would be cliched for her with her family's crest, a hawk, and the last one had a beautiful plume that was attractive to look at. Yet she felt no pull towards them so she moves on once again.

The toads she did not pause to look at.

The rats she spared a glance but saw nothing of interest. Although she did see one that looked remarkably like the rat Ron Weasley has. She was tempted to get that one just to play a prank on him but decided that it's not worth her time.

She turns into an aisle containing the cats and paused, feeling a pull. _'Finally,'_ she thinks to herself, _'I'm onto something.'_

She wanders slowly along, peering into the various cages as she searches for the One meant for her and her alone. All the ones that were several years old didn't feel right to her so she moved past them. It wasn't until she was at the other end of the aisle that she finally found what she hadn't known she was looking for. It was a slightly larger cage compared to the ones she had seen the other cats in. Within was a cat, several years old from the looks of it, but what made this one stand out to her was the litter of mewling kittens, all of which were old enough to leave their mother's side.

She thinks.

She isn't actually sure.

She watches the kittens for a few minutes. She sees a completely white one with shocking blue eyes crawl over its' mother's body and flop indignantly onto the bottom of the cage with a shocked mewl. She giggled at this one's antics and nearly missed the playful pounce of a pale furred kitten. She sees it just as the kitten lands onto the mother's tail, resulting in a small bat of her paw.

She realizes, as she watched this interaction, that this one is the smallest of the litter and enjoys the smattering of pale brown markings covering its' body. The pale brown stripes on the kitten's face seems to highlight the ice blue eyes. She likes this one. The pull that she has been feeling has actually vanished since she laid eyes on the kitten.

She smiles and went to get her aunt and a store clerk.

She needed to figure out what kind of name to give it.

She finds her aunt in the owl aisle, selecting a few packages of owl treats. She can only assume that the treats are for the owls at the Malfoy Manor. Draco's owl, Horus, refused to eat anything that isn't fresh mice or owl treats. Her aunt's owl, Athena, isn't as picky as Horus but she only accepts the best owl treat. Her uncle's owl, Julius, has a cruel streak and has a tendency to attempt to draw blood if she goes anywhere near him. He seems to match his owner's penchant for violence.

"Aunt Narcissa?" she taps her aunt's elbow.

"Yes?"

"I think I found my familiar," she tells her softly.

"Oh? Show me."

She takes her aunt's hand and leads her over to the cat's aisle. To the cage with the litter of kittens and their mother. "There," she points to the brown patterned kitten that is currently playing with the white kitten she had seen earlier.

"The white kitten?"

"No," she shakes her head and looks at her aunt. "The kitten with the brown spots."

"Mm… it's the smallest one," her aunt observes.

"Is that a bad thing?" she asks worriedly.

"No, it isn't," Narcissa gently runs her fingers through her goddaughter's hair. "Let's go see about getting you the kitten."

She stayed by the cage, watching the kitten as it runs about, pouncing its' siblings. She can't figure out what sex the kitten is. But then again, the kitten hasn't actually stayed still since she started watching.

Barely two minutes went by before her aunt returned with the cashier. She looks at them and steps out of the way to allow the witch to remove the selected kitten. Meissa watches as the kitten mewl and squirm in the witch's grasp. She could sense the kitten's distress as the witch made hushing sounds while lifting the kitten's tail.

"You're scaring the kitten!" she snaps at the witch, stepping forward and grabbing the witch's hand while taking the kitten from her. The second the kitten is in her hand, the kitten fell quiet. The trio paused at this and Meissa stares at the purring kitten. The small furry head nuzzling into her palm.

Meissa let go of the witch's arm without a thought, gently brushing her fingers over the kitten's head and back, getting a purr as a result of her ministrations.

"It looks like you really did find your familiar," Meissa hears her aunt comment before she instructs to gather supplies for the care of a cat. The kitten was busy mewling, getting a response from the other kittens. The mother cat took one look at her, jade green eyes meeting her dark brown eye, before casually dismissing her.

Meissa had to wonder if this meant she has been approved to take one of her kittens.

She turns her attention back to the kitten, studying the light brown markings. The stripes she had seen earlier seems to focus on primarily around the eyes with slight zigzags. On the kitten's left shoulder was a slightly darker brown mark that looks like a heart if she looks at it just right. Everything else she looks at seems rather plain in comparison to the two - there's a slight arrowhead shape to them but compared to the one on its' shoulder they're rather plain.

"Have you thought of a name yet?" she hears her aunt ask.

"No…" she looks at her aunt. "Do you have any suggestion?"

"Meissa, even if I did have a suggestion this is your familiar. Either the kitten will tell you her or his name or your familiar will accept a name given by you and only you." Meissa looks at the kitten in her hands and found ice blue eyes staring back at her. "Once we return home I'll give you a book on familiars."


	5. The Past

_**Aight everyone, this is the last chapter I'll be posting for today as promised. Hard to believe that soon I'll have to post a birthday chapter. Any suggestions as to what the birthday girl should get from her friends?**_

 _ **The same drill follows. I do not own any characters unless you don't recognize them - in that case those are mine. Please leave a review or drop me a PM, lemme know what ya'll think!**_

 _ **Chapter 5 - The Past**_

June 30th, 1992 - 1 day before Meissa's 12th birthday

Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

 _Chapter One: Forming the Bond_

 _Creating a bond with a familiar requires a connection that exists between wizard/witch and the familiar in question. The bond serves to enhance this connection._

Meissa frowns at the text and looks at the kitten lying on her school book. "This seems all elaborate," she remarks, skipping a few paragraphs to the diagram. She squints at the image before she sighs in annoyance. "Why do they make these so small," she mutters as she places a hand over the diagram.

Just a little bit of magic…

She lifts her hand from the page, with the copy of the rune contained between her fingers, and flicks her fingers out in front of her. The runes floating in front of her needed only a bit of readjustment to ensure that she could see every bit of detail in clarity.

Satisfied with the size of the diagram she returns to her reading that lays out the steps needed to form the bond. Step one has already been completed when she found her familiar in the shop. The next step is to spend time with the familiar to strengthen the connection prior to forming the bond.

She looks at her familiar. "Sounds like we're going to be spending a lot of time together," she comments to the sleepy kitten, getting only a soft meow in response. She turns her attention to the diagram she took the effort to enlarge, noting a few familiar runes but not recognizing the layout in general.

One rune she saw meant 'communicate' and another meant 'life'.

"Remmy," she calls for her personal house elf.

A crack, which startled her sleepy familiar, announced Remmy's presence long before her voice did. "Mistress Meissa called?"

"Yes," she turns towards her house elf, ready to request she make a copy of the diagram when she spies a sheet of parchment in the house elf's hand. Already suspecting that Remmy has predicted her order she holds a hand out for the parchment.

A quick glance at the parchment in her hand revealed that yes, Remmy did predict her order. Used to the house elf's tendency to do things on her behalf she simply accepts it as part of Remmy. With a fond smile she tugs the house elf's ear gently before sending her off with a thanks.

Done with her studies for the day she decides a trip down to her godfather's study would be nice. Before she leaves the room she picks her familiar up, placing the kitten in one of her robe's pocket.

"Probably shouldn't make a habit of traveling in my robes," she comments to the kitten, getting a long meow in response. "You might fit now but what will happen when you're fully grown?" She gets a slightly shorter response before her familiar peers out of her pocket as she walks down the stairs.

She smirks and pets the kitten's head before she pauses outside her godfather's study, peering into the room. It doesn't take her long to locate her godfather, sitting behind his desk as he studies a thick tome she knows to be about all the known potion ingredients and their effects in potions.

It is the same tome she had to read from after she blew up her godfather's lab trying to create a potion that would get rid of all common ailments. Meissa knows better now but she cannot help but remember that belief she had back then. The innocence she had and lost since then.

"Meissa I can see you," Severus' voice washes over her.

She leans against the door sill, smiling broadly at her godfather. "Are we still going to Oxford street?" she asks.

"Yes." She watches as her godfather starts to put away his things. He places his copy of the text in its place on the shelf behind his desk before shuffling his notes into a neat pile and locks them away in the top drawer of his desk. The locking charm clicking into place once the drawer has been shut. She knows not to bother trying to unlock it.

Her vow would keep her from using the second wand without supervision. While she can get away with using magic she prefers to minimize the chances of getting caught. So long she doesn't use her magic outside the wards on the Black Estates the risks are slim. Except, she has no doubt that the Ministry will do its best to find a reason to conduct raids on the estates. It's just fortunate that the wards on the estates only recognize the will of the Lord and Lady of the Black Estates. She's still unsure who the wards are obeying since the death of her great-grandfather. Her main theory is that the wards have reverted to default, protecting the Black estates but nothing more than that.

Meissa hasn't tried to practice at any of the other estates besides Nigri Sanctuarium. Since arriving at Nigri Sanctuarium she hasn't been out other than the trip to Diagon Alley. Usually she would have been visiting Draco and her aunt at the Malfoy Manor but she hasn't been there since the Yule break.

Since she been off on her own since the summer break started she has nothing to do except finish her summer homework and write letters. In between doing her homework and writing letters she has been making trips to the room on the top floor, mostly to look at the tomes and bottles. The ones that is instantly accessible to her all have labels that revealed to her that they are for meant for special occasions. There's one she saw for her 12th birthday and she's unsure if she really wants to view it on her birthday.

When she's not studying spells she's trying her best to do wandless magic. Sometimes it works but it's fairly rare for that to happen. For the most part her attempts at doing spells without her wand has been fairly awful. She's strong at doing spells well above her year when armed with a wand - as noted by Daphne on more than one occasions - but she can barely perform a first year's spell without one. Not unless there's a strong outburst of an emotion behind the attempt.

Ever since she used blood magic to slow down the stone curse, her magic has responded to her oddly. After the first three days without her magic cooperating, her magic worked well enough for her to go back to her usual activities. Only her wandless magic seemed to be unresponsive, what little success she had before now has a tendency of backfiring on her in some way. On more than one occasions, when she's trying to do a simple levitation spell, her magic would either not cooperate or overpower the spell causing whatever to go flying into any direction without warning.

Remmy's has been a life saver on more than one occasion either by patching up her mistakes or sometimes stopping the wayward items before they make a new hole in the walls or ceiling. She's also been responsible for keeping her out of trouble with her godfather, muffling the sounds of her various attempts to do wandless magic. She usually tries to do wandless magic in the warded room on the second floor but sometimes she forgets about the wonky behavior of her magic and tries to a spell in her room.

"Meissa, go get changed," she hears her godfather says. She takes her familiar out of her robe's pocket, placing the kitten on one of the chairs before removing her robe. Underneath she is wearing a pair of casual trousers - nothing too complicated or fancy - and a solid dark blue long sleeve shirt. "Ah, already prepared," Severus observes.

"You did say we'd go shopping for appropriate clothes."

"Mm? Ah, right, visiting Ms. Granger. Remind me again when is the meet up."

She sighs softly to herself. She should have realized that he would have forgotten if he's been so absorbed with his potions. "We're supposed to meet the Grangers at Leaky Cauldron on Saturday."

She is looking at her godfather when she sees him tense, his shoulders and back locking up. She can't see his face but she can guess that there's a look of guilt. She's used to his tendencies to get lost in his research, it's been a thing since she was placed in his care. Her godmother has been responsible for making sure she didn't grow up to be socially awkward and knows the pureblood etiquettes. Uncle Severus, when he's not preoccupied with his research, has been great as a guardian.

"We did not spend much time together…"

"Uncle Sevy, it's fine. How is your research going along?" she asks, hoping to deflect his mind from his lack of attention. The kitten mewled at her, prompting Meissa to pick up the spotted familiar.

"Meissa…"

"Can we go, Uncle Sev?" she asks as Remmy popped into the room. Instantly taking Meissa's discarded robes before popping out of the room again.

"Yes." Meissa smiles at her godfather before she hands her familiar over to Remmy to take care of while she's out shopping. She gets a protesting mewl from the kitten before she reassures the little one. Once the kitten was calm, with promises of milk and cream from Remmy, she follows her godfather out of the manor.

Casually gripping the sleeve of his jacket she's given a minute to practice herself before he apparates them.

The familiar sensation of being squeezed through a tiny tube no bigger than the tip of a needle still shakes her up and makes her stomach throw a riot. Stumbling from Severus' side she grinds her palms into the bricks that mark the entrance into Diagon Alley. The sensations grounds her in the moment, distracting her from the way her stomach is revolting, threatening to empty its entire content onto the pavement.

"At some point," she hears her godfather start in his usual drawl, "you will get use to apparating."

She makes a face as she stares at the dirty pavement, slowly feeling her stomach settle down. "It's been five years, Uncle Sev," she slowly straightens up, brushing off her hands against her slacks. "I still feel iffy every time we apparate," she grumbles, straightening her shirt as she turns to look at her uncle.

She gives him a slight smile before she follows him out of Leaky Cauldron and onto Charing Cross Road. She's been to Oxford street once before, when she was younger, so she knew that on a good day it'd take no more than twenty minutes of walking to get to the shopping district. Meanwhile she could window shop with her godfather as they walked, discussing anything that was not obviously magical.

For her it meant discussing the various things she has learnt from Hermione about the muggle world, asking for clarifications on certain terms or for her godfather's perspective on a matter. Fully aware of his acidic attitude towards teaching she always has a hard time reconciling the uncle she grew up with and the professor she sees in the classroom.

"Uncle Sev… how did you become my godfather?"

She watches him, out of the corner of her eye, pause for a brief moment before he started moving again. As if he has to reboot his brain at the question.

"Your mum asked me, a few months before you were born, if I would take you in. In the event of something happening to her."

She looks at him as they pause at a light. "How did you meet her?"

"I met your mother after she has already left the school. The war started before I started and I spent a lot of my first years in Lucius' company. Through him I met your mother. She's…. she was already involved in the war," he starts in a faraway voice.

She nods slightly, acknowledging his words. She remembers them telling her everything, or the highlights, of what her mother has done in the war. She knows her mother wasn't a saint, she has no delusion about that.

"Your mother was my mentor for a long time. Her 'techniques' are… legendary among us. Nothing can hold her back once she gets started." She feels him looking at her for a moment as they walked. It only takes her seconds to substitute the right words in as her godfather tells her this. "In fact…. You're a lot like your mother. I would even say you inherited her talent."

"Yeah?"

"Of course," Severus remarks drily. "After all, you are her daughter."

She smiles slightly, taking a small comfort in this before she reminds herself of one thing.

She needs to prove to the world that she is not her mother.

No pressure or anything.


	6. Muggle Shops

_**Hi everyone, sorry for the fact it has taken me so long to update this fic. I've been distracted with classes and work these last few weeks and I've barely had time to myself.**_

 _ **Anyway, enjoy this chapter and hopefully the next one won't be five months from now.**_

 _ **Chapter 6 - Muggle Shops**_

June 30th, 1992 - 1 day before Meissa's 12th birthday  
Location: Oxford Street, London

Meissa's strongly reminded of why she dislikes shopping as she tosses another shirt aside, disliking the collar. She's been trying to find clothes casual enough for the Grangers. But the clothes she has been trying on so far, mostly shirts, are all something she would wear around her cousin.

Polo shirts, dress shirts, polo neck sweaters, and so on. Each and every one of them feels too much for a few weeks with the Grangers. She has already picked out a at least a week worth of trousers. Most of them are jeans, some are black but the rest of the jeans are either faded blue jeans or dark blue. She also has at least two pairs of trousers that are called 'cargos'. They're surprisingly comfortable and there's plenty of pockets too. She has an idea about the pockets but she'll have to make sure no one discovers the modifications.

Her uncle also got her to consider getting something called 'cargo shorts'. Trying one on was interesting in her opinion. It's like a pair of trousers except they cut off below the knees instead of the usual length. It feels a bit weird, not having her legs covered, yet at the same time they are just as comfortable as the jeans and the cargos pants.

"Meissa, have you found anything you like yet?" she hears her godfather call her from outside the fitting room. He's accompanied by a store assistant who has been a great help so far. Except she can't seem to find a type of shirt she likes.

"No," she puts on her shirt again and opens the door to look at her godfather. "All of these feels too formal."

The woman, Sara, nods as she accepts the bundle of shirts and hangs them on a rack to be returned to the floor later. "Do you like long sleeves by any chance?" Sara asks.

"If the sleeves are loose enough."

Sara nods thoughtfully, studying Meissa. The Black heiress returns the look, her right hand gripping her elbow. Her posture loose and relaxed as she waits for Sara to finish her studying. The shirts before were all selected by her godfather - shirts she wouldn't have normally minded except they feel like too much.

Meissa watches Sara leave and takes this as a chance to look at her godfather. "Thank you for being so… patient."

"Of course," Severus drawls as he studies his goddaughter. "I still think you are being difficult."

"I just… It's too formal."

"You're an heiress."

She folds her arms across her chest, shifting her weight to one foot as she stares at him. "I may be an heiress but I don't want to seem like a twat in front of Hermione's parents."

His eyebrows rose at her choice of words. "Two things. One, don't use that word ever again," he starts in a tone that told her she's in trouble, "Two, as an heiress you are obligated to uphold an image."

"If I was in the company of the other nobles, sure," she retorts, keeping an eye out for Sara.

"You should regardless of whom you surround yourself. Habits have a tendency to occur at the most inconvenient times."

She looks questioningly at her godfather, puzzling over his words for a moment. But before she could comment on his words she spies Sara approaching with a load of shirts that looks different in comparison to the previous pile. She sees a few shirts that are button ups except they seem to be checkered pattern instead of the solid black or white in comparison.

"Here, try these on," Sara set the pile of clothes aside for Meissa inside the changing room.

Taking the cue for what it is the young Heiress enters the changing room and picks up one of the shirts. It's a dark grey cotton long sleeved collarless Henley - what is a Henley? - shirt that fits snug to her. She picks out a pair of blue jeans to see how the two, paired together, looks like. Her trousers are swapped out for the jeans and she takes her first look in the mirror.

Humming thoughtfully to herself, feeling like something is missing, she picks up a short sleeve collarless shirt with some kind of branding on the front and back and slips it on over the long sleeve. A few minor adjustments and the short sleeve shirt sits right on her shoulders, nearly a size bigger than herself but loose in comparison to the Henley shirt she put on first.

She steps back out to show her godfather and Sara, getting instant approval from Sara and a slow nod from Severus. Emboldened by the approval she returns to the changing room and tries on the other shirts. In most combinations she finds she likes having a Henley long sleeves shirt underneath the top shirt.

Unless it is one of the checkered pattern shirt, the texture of it feels like wool so it feels like a long sleeved Henley and the shirt would feel like too much. So she swaps out the Henley for something that covers the span of her shoulders but ends there, leaving the entirety of her arms bare. With the checkered wool shirt she covers the rest of her arms.

A brief trip out gains instant approval from Sara and another nod of acceptance from her godfather. Pleased that she's finding plenty of shirts to like she goes back to trying out shirts.

In the end, she walks out of the store with at least eight pairs of trousers, three 'cargo shorts', and nearly twenty shirts of various styles and types - short sleeves, long sleeves, button up, collarless, etc. She's rather satisfied with herself, finding a style that suits her, and she now feels ready to head over to Hermione's house for the summer.

"Do you have everything you need?" Severus asks after they find a secluded alley to shrink down the bags and pocket them.

"I have clothes for a week," she thinks to herself. "I can have Remmy wash them, right?" she asks him, thinking.

"You could, but you need to consider that prolong exposure to magic may have an impact on their electricity."

She frowns to herself, thinking. She's still unsure what electricity is exactly but she understands, from some of her conversations with Hermione, that the non-magical rely on it for their daily activities. That's the only thing she truly understands out of the whole thing.

"So… I'm going to need learn how to clean my clothes without magic?"

"Yes, that will be the case."

Meissa crosses her arms, thinking. As she thinks she remembers the reason why she's interested in going to Hermione's house. She wants to learn and understand how the non-magical people live their life - she can't do that if she's still using magic, and house-elves, to improve her life. "I can learn," she decides in the end.

"It will not be easy," Severus warns her lightly.

"Life isn't easy," she remarks before he leads her into a store.

This one, she sees after a glance around, is a shop full of books. Excited she spares her godfather one look before she runs off into the stacks. Severus rolls his eyes in amusement and follows after her, picking up books he believes she will enjoy. He regrets that he hasn't ever brought her to a bookstore in the muggle world - she would have probably past a lot of her free time reading the fictional books instead of the tomes in the Black library. Maybe then she would have had some chance of having a normal childhood.

"Uncle Sev!" he hears her before he sees her with a stack of books that reaches up to the underside of her chin.

Amused by her excitement, yet refusing to let any of it show, he takes a book from the top. _The Mists of Avalon_ , he observes as he flips it over to the back to read the synopsis. "I'm not sure if this is appropriate for you to read," he remarks, fully aware that she's been reading the books from the library - books that a young girl shouldn't be reading in the first place.

"But it's about Arthur, Morgan, and Merlin," she protests before her godfather takes half of the stack to lighten the load in her arms.

"You do realize that these books will be fictional," he questions her, "In no way are these accurate accounts of what happened in that time period."

"I know that," she pouts at him before he gives in and studies the next couple of books. _The Sword of Shannara_ , he notes with interest. It seems to revolve around elves, dwarves, and humans but he doesn't have an issue with her reading the books.

"Is there anything else you want to get or are you satisfied with what you have for now."

Meissa considers the stacks before nodding her head. "I think I'm good, Uncle Sev," she announces before following him to the registers. She follows his actions, placing the stacks on the counter, and watches as the tall slim pimple faced teenager rung up the books, placing them into bags while telling her uncle the total.

She watches her godfather counts out the notes, counting the numbers together before he hands it over to the sale clerk. She makes a note to herself to study the papers later and get a better idea of how to use them. It'd be a good thing to know once she starts to spend her summer at Hermione's house. Until then, she can let her uncle handle the non-magical currency.

Maybe she can have Hermione teach her whenever she gets the chance.

~MJB~

Meissa hums happily to herself as she debates which book to start reading once she gets the chance. Perhaps the first book she pulls out of the bag? It's a possible method unless she pulls out a book somewhere in the middle of a series. She could select the first book in that case - it should count. First she'd need to make sure that the recently bought clothes are washed and packed before the weekend. Remmy will be a great help in this aspect - maybe she can get the house elf to teach her how to wash her clothes?

"Meissa," she hears her godfather before she sees him setting a tray of… questionable food on the table between them. "I can see your brain working overtime. Perhaps you should take a break and eat your lunch."

She smiles sheepishly at her godfather and sets the bags of books aside - yet to be shrunken down for convenience. She watches as he sets a box, no bigger than her hand, in front of her along with a container of long yellow things. Curious she takes one and takes a bite, instantly recognizing the taste of potatoes along with salt and one more thing she cannot readily identified. Surprised by the taste she finishes off the one she has in her hand. "What is this?" she asks her godfather, gesturing to the food he has laid out in front of her along with a cup of something that looks like tea.

"This is chicken," he points to the small round crispy brown food that is in the box that he placed in front of her. "And these are," he points to the container she has already tried, "something called French fries."

She nods to herself and tries the chicken as her godfather sets out a small container in front of her, filled with this orange colored thick fluid. Curious she dips one of the chicken pieces into it and nibbles on it. A surprised noise escapes her as the taste compliments the chicken, flooding her mouth.

"This is better than I expected," she mutters before she takes a sip of the drink he has given her. It was unsweetened but its' definitely tea.

"This is just an example of what the… they have," he corrects himself before he could call the non-magicals 'muggles' out in public. "You will likely experience more while living with the Grangers."

"Do you think so?"

"I know so," Severus resorts, sitting across from her with a box that has something that looks akin to a sandwich. Except there seems to be a thick slice of meat, lettuce, and tomatoes. The bread looks different in comparison with what the house-elves use for their sandwiches. She makes a note to ask her godfather about what he's eating at another time, content to finish her meal so they can finish their shopping and return home before it gets too late.

Remmy, bless her heart, would throw a fit if they are to miss supper. Meissa is fully aware of the house-elf's tendency to mother her if she misses a meal due to a lack of appetite - which happens far more than she cares to admit - or by being too absorbed in her personal studies.

There's still so many memories she can view at a whim - she's just been reluctant to do so because it hurts so much to realize what she may have missed out on with her mother being locked away in Azkaban.

~MJB~

 _ **So, I mentioned two real life books (The Mists of Avalon and The Sword of Shannara). Both books are something I've personally read and would recommend to all if you have not yet read.**_


	7. Happy Birthday!

_**Chapter 7 - Happy Birthday!**_

July 1st, 1992 - Meissa's 12th birthday  
Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

Meissa's twelfth birthday finds the auburn hair girl sitting at her desk as the sun begins its ascent into the sky. The Black Heiress has been awake for hours, unable to sleep as she waits for the exact hour and minutes of her birth. Her Aunt Cissy once told her that she had been born precisely at 9:19 AM on July 1st, 1980 - which means, when her fourteenth birthday arrives her soulmate mark will finally appear at the exact moment she was born. Down to the very second.

The thought of it still scares her but she knows, from looking at her godmother, that the soulmate mark doesn't always mean it has to be a romantic soulmate. Some of the tomes she has found in the Black Library indicated that the soulmate mark has always been taken into consideration when arranged marriages are bartered. She still hasn't seen her godmother's mark - it's considered rude to try and look at a person's mark without their permission. The only ones exempted from this rule is the one whom the mark represented.

She's unsure if she wants to have a soulmate mark but she has heard stories about those whose marks has never appeared - the general attitude to those without a mark disgusted her. The assumptions that the mark must represent a romantic bond also irritated her. She often, usually on her birthdays, find herself wondering what would've happened if the marks had been there since birth instead of appearing at their fourteenth birthdays.

She usually only considers this only at her birthdays but now, thinking about her friends who live among the non-magicals, she wonders if magic and whatever forces that decides the soulmate bonds has a reason to have the marks appear at the person's fourteenth birthday. She doesn't know much about the non-magicals but she does remember her godfather mentioning that they're unlucky to have no way to find their other half.

As much as the idea of having a mark irritated her - and scared her if she's being honest with herself - she can't really imagine trying to find her 'other half' without a mark.

With an irritated huff she pushes away from the desk and turns to face her room. Her thoughts have been repeating itself for the last four years and at this point she knows better than to let herself get stuck in the endless loop of thoughts. Instead she focuses her attention at her room, studying the walls and furniture.

Meissa's personal bedroom consist of dark vibrant purple walls with white/blue swirls. The furniture's themselves are made of a dark colored wood - African Ebony she thinks - and complimented by a cream colored fabric for the loveseats and the bedcovers. Her bed has shimmering silver drapes drawn around it, more than adequate enough to prevent anyone from peeking in on her from the door. With a bit of magic - not done by her - her line of sight is not hampered at all by the drapes, which is handy in her opinion.

It had taken her a long time to notice that the swirls on the walls form animals. For the most part she has identified a stag with an impressive amount of points, a grim-like dog that freaked her out the first time she noticed it, a large wolf-like creature, an otter, a smaller stag that she can only assume is younger than the other one, and a smaller dog - it seems like a small breed that doesn't quite reach the knees. Sometimes she thinks she sees the animals in different places than she did before - although, with magic in play she considers it very likely that someone has enchanted her walls.

Some days she feels that there's something else near the otter-like swirls besides the smaller stag and the small dog. But she has never been able to identify what that mass of swirls looks like. She just hopes that she'll figure it out one day but until then she'll just have to accept that she cannot for the time being.

Unsure what she wants to do for her twelfth birthday she goes over to the loveseat, gently picking up her napping familiar and setting her onto her lap after she sat down. Once the kitten is fully comfortable on her lap she picks up Rieger's book with a slight pout on her face. She has recently finished the first chapter, just before the clock struck midnight to mark her twelfth birthday. It had been a really long chapter, seemingly covering a year at Hogwarts.

Otter, the main character, is an immensely smart witch who befriends Stag and Terrier after a rough and bumpy start to their year. It amused Meissa a great deal to read the constant clashes between Otter and Terrier with Stag always playing the middle man between the two. To the Black Heiress, Terrier seems like a jealous boy with an extremely short fuse. In a way, it reminds her greatly of the youngest Weasley boy so she automatically hates him.

She wanted to read more but she found, after finishing the first chapter, that the second chapter is blank. In fact, all the chapters after the first is blank. She knows that there's more because she can see the page numbers and the chapter titles - which is usually something like 'Chapter Three'. But the content of the chapters seems to be gone.

Meissa's not entirely sure why this is the case but her best guess is that there's some kind of spell on the book that is preventing her from reading the chapters. Maybe the owner of the book or her mama wants her to read the chapters at certain times and not one second before. Either way she's stuck unless she figures out a way to unlock the chapters.

She's not entirely sure how she'll find the enchantment but she's fully aware there's many different kinds of spells in the entirety of Britain, not including the spells out in the whole world. The chances of locating one spell would be like, to borrow a phrase from Hermione, finding a needle in a pile of straw.

She doesn't think the spell she made to help her speed up her researching will be of much help, not without knowing the specifics. It's also possible that the spell may be brand new or not well known. If that is the case then it's extremely unlikely that she'll find anything. Before her mind could follow that line of thought even further she hears a distinctive pop that has her lifting her head from the couch. She's so familiar with the sound that she simply turns her attention to the house-elf patiently waiting for her acknowledgement.

"Hello Remmy," she greets, "is it time?"

"Yes, Mistress Meissa. Lady Cissy and little Dragon is here," Remmy announces before producing a vial with a familiar liquid within. With an unhappy look on her face, Meissa eases herself into a sitting position before she accepts the potion, tossing it back in one motion. She barely allows the taste to settle onto her tongue before she gulps it down. Only the barest hint of the taste lingers in her mouth.

"I will be down soon," Meissa declares, allowing Remmy to send the vial away to be cleaned and returned to her godfather's potion lab. "Please set aside -," the Black Heiress just barely managed to get the words out of her mouth when, with a snap of her fingers, Remmy already has clothes laid out for her. A casual pair of black trousers and a loose fitting grey button up shirt. It may be too casual to wear around the Lord Malfoy - fortunately, however, he rarely ever attends her birthday celebrations. So she rarely ever has to deal with his ideals of what a pureblood should wear.

Since that will likely include a floor length robe or dress gown, for a lady, and something highly uncomfortable she has no issue with the Lord Malfoy not being present for her birthdays. After what happened during the Yule break, she doesn't want him anywhere near her or in any of the Black estates. A fact her godmother is fully aware of at this point.

Meissa gently moves the kitten from her lap, getting a protesting mewl from her sleepy familiar. A soft word from her has the kitten settling down once more, allowing her to go and change into her clothes. Due to the simplicity of her clothes, it is an easy matter of discarding her sleep ware and putting on the clothes laid out for her. Since she has never gone to sleep Meissa's hair is, for once, not a tangled mess.

Still, she knows better than to believe that the matter regarding her hair can be resolved with a simple brushing. With a brush in hand she settles down and set to work on getting the tangles out of her hair. Despite the fact she could request that Remmy does her hair, she knows that falling out of the habit of caring for her hair would prompt her godfather or godmother into doing the task for her. Usually that results in an elaborate hairstyle that makes her feel odd just for the complexities of this task - that's just if her godmother does it. If her godfather gets involved, she knows he'll get frustrated with the thickness of her hair and threaten to have it cut if she insists on not caring for her hair.

After she gets the worse of the tangles out of her hair she gets a bottle of a potion out and uses a fair amount to tame the unruliness of her hair. She's not fond of using the potion since it's fairly pricy and the length of her hair meant she gets maybe two uses out of a single bottle. In the long run, her godmother has decided that the potion - because of the costs - would be reserved for special occasions.

Her birthday, unfortunately, is one of those special occasions.

Instead of leaving her hair down or twisting her long hair into a braid, she decides to go with a combination of the two. She gathers half of her hair back into a ponytail, leaving the rest to cascade down her back. Once she binds her hair up with a ribbon she gets started on braiding the rest of the tail. She secures the braid with another ribbon of the same color before running the brush over her hair once more.

Once she is satisfied that her hair is presentable and that her clothes are straight, she checks on her familiar and asks the kitten if she'd like to accompany her. With a sleepy mewl as her answer she leaves the kitten to their catnap and heads downstairs to the dining room.

A short trip later she finds Draco in the formal living room, dressed in his best clothes and his platinum blonde hair slicked back from his pale face. She rather likes him better when his hair isn't slicked back - he looks less arrogant and rather casual when it's not gelled back. However the Lord Malfoy has always insisted that Draco should look like a proper pureblood Heir. To Lucius, it means being immaculate in every possible second.

Meissa just thinks that it's too high end for her tastes. In many ways she's thankful that her godparents were not so demanding of her. One part of her thinks it's' because they've spent the past six years undoing three years of bigotry from her Great Aunt Walburga. As well as ensuring that the bigotry from the general public didn't take too heavy of a toll on her.

Her mind flashes through years of accusations, of spells thrown at her, and her magic lashing out before she forces herself to push aside the memories. There is a time and place for everything.

"Meissa," Draco greets her, a smile appearing on his face once he notices her. The smile causing his face to look younger, like the boy she knew before Lucius took over his education after his eighth birthday. "Happy birthday!"

She grins at him and wraps her arms around him in a hug, noting that she has maybe an inch on him. She refrains from commenting it to him, saving it for another day. Instead she cherishes the rare moment with her cousin before she releases the blonde - fighting to keep the instinctive shudder from becoming obvious. Just in time to keep him from complaining from the prolonged contact.

"Thank you," she tells him formally, clearing her throat. She gets an eye roll from the blonde and turns to her aunt, who had waited for their hug to end. "Hello, Aunt Cissy," she greets before she finds herself wrapped in a firm but gentle hug. She endures this hug, despite the crawling sensation currently building up in her.

Hermione has made her realize that despite how much she dislike prolonged contact, other people do not share that same sentiment. So for them, for those she cares about, she endures the hugs to the best of her abilities. Some days she can barely tolerate a five second touch but she tries her best when they truly need it.

"Happy birthday, Meissa," Narcissa smiles at her goddaughter, her glacial blue eyes glancing over the now twelve years old girl. She remembers fondly of the moment when her sister asks her to become the godmother of her newborn child - of when the girl was placed within her arms. She had sworn, after agreeing to become Meissa's godmother, to always protect and guide her niece.

It saddens Narcissa somewhat, to accept that her niece is growing up when she knows that her niece has had her childhood stolen from her in so many ways. To accept that her niece is sacrificing the rest of her childhood to become the Lady of the Ancient and Noble House of Black. She knows that her goddaughter has already filed the paper works necessary for her to be recognized by the Wizengamot council as the new Lady Black. All that is missing is the ring.

"Thank you," Meissa smiles gratefully at her aunt before she gestures towards the formal dining room where she knows the house elves have most likely already set up for their birthday feast. Meissa wonders briefly about where her godfather is as she leads them into the dining room. Only to find out that her godfather is already standing by the table, dressed in his best robes. His hair, for once, clean of any and all grease from the usual potion making progress.

"Meissa," Severus greets, clasping the young Heiress on the shoulder. "How do you feel?" His eyes, however, asked if she has remembered to take her potions. A slight nod from her allowed for him to relax, his shoulders lowering just a bit as the tension left him. "Happy birthday."

She smiles at him before he guides her to sit at the head of the table - a seat that has been occupied by her godfather for years. The fact that he's giving up the seat to her…

Meissa looks towards her aunt and cousin.

Draco's face indicated his confusion in the events happening before him. His training enough to tell him that something truly important is happening before him but beyond that he doesn't know. The fact he hasn't demanded answers from any of them indicated he has some form of an idea of what's happening.

Her aunt, on the other hand, seems like she is attempting to hide her emotions. Meissa can barely ever understand what her godmother is thinking since she is truly a master at hiding her emotions. But today, at this moment, she gets the impression that her aunt is _proud_ of her.

She's not quite sure about the _why_ though.


	8. Birthday Gifts

_**Hey everyone, so I've posted two chapters for ya'll to make up for the long absence. Hopefully this will make up for it a bit.**_

 _ **Chapter 8 - Birthday Gifts**_

July 1st, 1992 - Meissa's 12th birthday  
Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

Breakfast, after they've sat down to eat, went along well. Exchanging idle pleasantries with her cousin as the adults spoke about the plans for the rest of the summers. Draco was trying to convince his cousin to back out of her summer plans with Hermione - his words all but dripping of acid she has not ever associated with him. It has her wondering if the prolonged exposure to his father has taught him more habits she'll have to undo.

"I've already made plans, Dray," she reprimands him lightly. Attempting to remind him that breaking off plans isn't what they do.

"But we haven't spent any time together this summer," he grumbles, his cutlery scraping against the surface of his plate.

"Well, you are welcome to join us on August 1st," she remarks idly. Her eyes raking over her cousin's pouting face.

"It has always been between us though."

She props her head up on a fist as her eyes bore down on her cousin. "There's never been any other," Meissa intones flatly. "Except for your friends." Draco winces slightly at that - the reminder that he always had company whereas he was all she was willing to tolerate until she had met Daphne and Hermione.

This was probably the first time in many years that Meissa was going to spend any time with someone who was not him. With that realization he couldn't really demand that she cancel her plans - not when it would make him a hypocrite. He also realizes another thing. Meissa only have so many friends and rarely ever trusts… So that means he has to play nice with Granger.

"So… you said the first of August," Draco starts tentatively. Trying his best to hide the faint dust of a blush on his cheeks as Meissa arches an eyebrow at him.

She hadn't been expecting a switch in his mindset.

"Yes," she confirms in a light tone. "A fair warning to you though, cousin of mine, I will not tolerate your… usual attitude towards 'Mione."

Severus and Narcissa, having become briefly distracted from their conversation, exchange looks at the protective tone that had colored Meissa's words. Severus was already fully aware of how protective Meissa is of her friends - the reputation she has in Hogwarts is no secret to any of the professors. He's fairly certain that the other Head of the Houses look at Meissa first whenever something happens that has Hermione Granger or Daphne Greengrass in the middle of the action. Narcissa, on the other hand, has only seen a glimpse of the protectiveness her niece has for the two girls in questions. She didn't see what Severus saw throughout Meissa's first year in Hogwarts but from what little she saw at King's Cross told her much about the bond between Meissa and her friends.

"I…," Draco hesitates slightly under the combined gazes of Meissa, his mother, and godfather, "I promise I will be on my best behavior."

"Thank you," she nods her head slightly before returning to her meal. Remmy pops in just as she is finishing her plate and with a snap of her fingers, Meissa's dishes are gone. Only to be replaced by a small plate of scones with a slice of cake and a mug of hot chocolate. A smile lights up on her face as she recognizes the scones and cake.

Bananas Foster Scones, one of her favorites so far, is a type of scone mainly made from banana. Drizzled with a glaze made from sugar, spices, liqueur, rum, and orange zest. She remembers her godfather not being happy about what the content of the glaze was made from until Remmy reassured him that the cooking process burns out all the alcohol. Meissa enjoys the scones more than the 'traditional' scones her aunt favors with her tea.

The cake, on the other hand, is probably the best part of her birthdays since Remmy tend to reserve them for special occasions. Blueberry breakfast cake, as Remmy calls it, is a soft sweet cake packed with blueberries with a crisp sweet streusel topping. She really enjoys the cake since it practically falls apart in her mouth with the blueberries bursting on her tongue. It's made all the better by the fact that she rarely gets to enjoy the cake.

"Happy birthday, Mistress Meissa!" the house elf chirps happily, her smile bright as the young Heiress laughs and tugs on the house elf's ear.

"Thank you," Meissa smiles fondly at the house elf before she turns her attention to her breakfast desert.

Once everyone has finished - including Meissa finishing her birthday deserts - they headed over to the informal living room with Severus stepping aside from the group to retrieve something. Before Meissa can even sit Draco was already shoving a large package into her hands with a wide grin that told her he thinks he has found the best gift for her.

She makes quick work of the wrapping and pries open the box before staring at the contents in shock. Within is a set of dueling armor, a touch revealed to her that its made from dragon hide but she's not quite sure of which dragon breed, along with a set of robes that looks and feels like the best kind of fabric to offer for robes. At the very least it is not cheap.

"Draco…" she looks between the smirking blonde and the gift she has laying on her lap. "How much did this cost you?!"

Narcissa chuckles in amusement as she watches her niece's reaction. "I did warn you she'd have this reaction," she chides her son.

"I know," he crows happily.

"I thought we agreed to a cap!" she exclaims, throwing a pair of fingerless dragonhide gloves at her cousin.

"We did!" he laughs, catching the gloves.

"This is more than 20 Galleons!" she grumbles, thinking about the gift she had gotten her cousin for his birthday. She had gotten him an enchanted ring, a ring made of a steel alloy with a polished onyx stone with no impurity. The band of the ring has runes engraves into it, runes meant to reinforce the protection she intended for him. It was a custom ordered item that didn't cost more than 20 Galleons. (1)

This present from her cousin, with a jerkin, pants, boots, gloves, and robes, was surely more than 20 Galleons.

"How much did this cost you," she demands from her cousin, glaring at him.

"I'm not telling you that," he laughed, ignoring the glare as he smirks.

Combined with the gift he had given her for Yule, she's once more outfitted in the best dragonhide offered. Her previous set were now too small for her, a resizing spell would not be helpful since the dragonhide is impervious to spells in general. With her tendency to practice spells that can cause considerable damage it's a good investment.

"He paid nearly 400 Galleons," Narcissa remarks idly, getting immediate and polar opposite responses. (2)

"Draco!"

"Mother!"

Narcissa smirks at them, enjoying their expressions as Severus sweeps into the room. He arches an eyebrow at the two pre-teens before looking at Narcissa for clarification. A brief explanation had him smirking in amusement. He was grateful that his godson has saved him the time of purchasing his goddaughter another set of dueling clothes.

"Meissa," Narcissa calls to her niece to distract the girl from the expensive gift from her son. "I have something for you."

"Aunt Cissy," she starts before her aunt holds up a hand in the universal gesture 'hold it'.

It's right then when she realizes there's a thrum of magic in the area. A familiar sensation from long ago. From when Morgen's wand connected with her for the first time ever. The memory of the event has her questioning what's happening right that second. Watching as her aunt dismisses Draco from the room, getting an indignant response from the blonde boy - at least until Meissa realizes what's happening.

"Draco," Meissa starts, looking at her cousin as he continues to protest being dismissed. "This is House related."

It takes him all but two seconds to realize what she means by 'House'. "I'm related though!"

"You are born of the Malfoy House and you are its' heir. Despite your connection to the House of Black you are still not permitted to witness any rituals that belongs solely to this House." She looks at her cousin who was scowling at the exclusion. "If you were to be disowned then, then the House of Black would be open to you but not one second before."

He looks sullenly between the two adults and his cousin before he storms out of the room in an indignant huff. The scene was so out there it unintentionally amused the raven-haired pre-teen. A part of Meissa wonders if she'll be hearing about this for weeks to come. Now it seems like her summer plans will be a life saver if only because it'll keep her from strangling the sole Heir to the Malfoy House.

While she was musing about her cousin's antics, her aunt was setting up wards around the various entrances and windows. Meissa can only assume they are to keep her cousin from eavesdropping in what happens within the room. It seems like something he would do anyway. She turns her attention to her godfather who is setting up a large basin she honestly cannot place for the life of her.

Not waiting for the go ahead from her godfather she steps closer to the stone basin for a better look, studying the carvings she can now see from her new position. Along the lip of the basin were a series of runes she doesn't recognize but she does notice that the stone itself seems smooth. Whether that is by design or from the fact it's a family heirloom, is a question she cannot answer at that given time.

The dark coloring of the stone made it a bit hard for her to try and identify the material but she would bet that it is either obsidian or onyx. Both are known for their uses in protection but one leans towards divination while the other leans to defensive magic. The pure power that seems to be radiating from the bowl spoke of generations of usage and, as she peers into the basin, the shimmer of the liquid was captivating.

"Silver?" she asks out of curiosity, sensing a spell wrapped around the basin, her brown eyes glancing up to her godparents.

"Yes," Narcissa answers before she moves to stand opposite of Meissa. Severus, as a witness, moves aside and knelt down to one knee - dark eyes glittering as the lights dimmed in the room. "Meissa Jean Black," her aunt intones, "Firstborn Daughter of Bellatrix Enyo Black, Heiress to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black." With each naming Meissa feels another layer of magic add to the one surrounding the basin. "Granddaughter of the now deceased Lord Cygnus Altair Black the Second. Great-Granddaughter of the now deceased Lord Pollux Black."

At her great-grandfather's name the magic surrounding them pulse at least three times before settling heavily on Meissa's shoulders similar to a mantle. Her dark brown eyes stare up at her aunt, seeing the approval in her aunt's eyes. As Meissa watches, Narcissa withdraws a box from her robes, roughly the size of Narcissa's palm. She opens the box to reveal a familiar ring to Meissa. The very ring that has once rested on her great-grandfather's finger.

It's a thick ring, made from old blessed iron, with the brand etched with runes so tiny Meissa doubts she will ever begin to understand what its purpose is. On the face of the ring is the crest of the Black family. Other than that, she couldn't identify anything from the simple ring although she did sense several layers of enchantments on the ring. Before she can get a better idea of the enchantments her aunt removes the ring from the box and without further ado she drops the ring into the swirling silver liquid. The second the ring disappeared into the basin the magic that has settled onto Meissa wraps tighter around the young Heiress as Narcissa steps back.

"I, Narcissa Malfoy née Black, call upon the Guardian of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black to test Meissa Jean Black's worthiness to be Lady Black," Narcissa intones before she drops to her knee. At her aunt's words, the magic thickens around her before untwisting, gathering over the surface of the basin. Slowly but surely forming the magic begins to take on a shape that isn't readily recognizable to her. As the shape begins to take form, the world around her slowly takes on a grey appearance. Until she realizes that the background noises have fallen silence and nothing stirs within the confines of the room.

Just as she notices this, the magic solidifies into the shape of a raven that remains floating above the basin. It's almost fitting that the House of Black would have a raven as the core of the Family magic. The raven turns its gaze onto Meissa, causing her to feel the weight of the magic on her shoulders.

The raven's wings readjust themselves against its body as the guardian stares her down. _"So, you are the next generation of this House."_

Well… that was unexpected…

~MJB~

 ** _I'm actually curious as to what's ya'll thoughts are about the chapters so far. Please leave a review and lemme know what ya'll think._**

(1) 20 Galleons - $200 roughly

(2) 400 Galleons - $4,000 roughly


	9. The Lady

**_Chapter 9 - The Lady_**

July 1st, 1992 - Meissa's 12th birthday  
Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

Meissa stares at the raven in shock, blinking in disbelief. "Uh…" she glances at her godparents, a part of her wondering about why they're not reacting to this.

" _Do not bother,"_ the raven tilts its head at her, _"Only you can see me."_ The Guardian's eyes stared deep into her as the magic around her seems to grow heavier. _"As the Heiress and the one seeking to claim the title, only you may see and hear me. Of course, they won't hear you either."_

"So, this conversation - for all intent and purpose - is private."

" _That is correct."_

"That's… good to know." She's not entirely sure about that. She's actually unsure of what is supposed to happen now. Normally, she thinks, the Family magic either accepts or rejects the Heir. She doesn't recall anything about the manifestation of the Family Magic talking to the Heir. "I… I'm not sure what should happen now."

The Guardian made a loud grating noise that shakes her to her core. It takes her a second to realize that the raven is laughing. _"I apologize,"_ the raven says, stretching their wings briefly. _"It is rare I encounter a female who has yet to receive their Birthright."_

"My Birthright?"

The raven cocks its head to the side, studying her for a moment longer. _"I had noticed that the Family has fallen… into disrepair."_ She nods her head slightly in agreement. _"The current holder of the Gift, it is their responsibility to teach unto you your Birthright."_

"Who is the current… holder?" She's curious about what, exactly, is the Gift.

" _Bellatrix Enyo Black."_

She grimaces at this revelation. "My mother." That would make learning anything rather impossible for the unforeseeable future.

" _Indeed."_ The raven does a hopping motion before jumping up to glide around Meissa once. _"Tell me, as Lady of the Family, what do you swear?"_

Meissa shivers as the voice, rough and guttural, echoes in her mind. The words summoning up something within her. "I… I swear - upon my honor, life, and magic - to rebuild the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. To change the image of the House and bring honor back to the name."

" _How do you intend to do such a thing."_

"I intend to change the family's alignment and stance on many policies."

The raven made a rough grating noise that she can only reason to be laughter. _"You intend to change decades of thinking?"_ She nods hesitantly, shaken to her core but refusing to allow it to show on her face. She has had months to think this over and she's not about to allow the Guardian of the Family to lead her astray. _"You, a mere witch, to undo the work of many."_ More laughter follows before the raven hovers in front of her, black wings beating a slow beat. _"This… I admit, I would like to see."_

She looks at the raven, arching an eyebrow at the manifestation of the family's magic. She couldn't quite make sense of what the Guardian was talking about. The Guardian ignored her questioning look, moving to settle over the basin.

" _You tell me you intend to rebuild the House, to change the alignments, what else do you intend?"_

Meissa clears her throat as she gathers her thoughts. Just barely able to prevent her fingers from twisting in and among themselves. She takes a second to steady herself before she begins to explain some of her plans to the attentive raven. There's a slight issue, she realizes, about talking to magic. It makes it rather hard to garner an understanding of what the raven thinks of her plans. To help her in this moment, all she has is the passion for her House. The sense of responsibility she feels she owes to the family.

The raven listened raptly to her plan before nodding once she finished. _"You have quite the plan, young one. I am interested in what you do in the upcoming years,"_ the Guardian states before jumping up from the basin. _"I deem you worthy of the title. It is time for you to give your oath."_

The oath.

This one she knows well due to her preparations.

"I, Meissa Jean Black, - claim by blood, by law, by magic - the House of Black. I swear to lead with honor and fairness. To protect and shelter those who belong or are allies to the House of Black by blood, by law, by magic, by oath. To deliver justice on those who break oath and trust with the House of Black. So have I sworn; so mote it be."

The raven lets out a deafening noise as the magic surges out of the basin and surrounds her. The liquid silver wrapping around her as the magic blanketed her core and tested her worthiness. She can scarcely breathe under the weight of the magic but refuses to buckle under the weight of centuries of traditions. Magic steeped in blood and rituals, magic done in in all alignments. The magic kept building and building until it threatens to suffocate her but still, she refused to drown.

Just as sudden as the magic has surrounded her, it's gone. The greyness of the world vanishing along with it. The Guardian gone along with the magic of the ritual. As she blinks from the sudden shift, she notices something as her aunt and godfather look at her.

On her right forefinger rest the House ring. The symbol of her newfound status as the Head of the House of Black.

"Lady Meissa Black," Narcissa acknowledges, brushing off her robes as she rises to her full height.

Severus stays silent as he studies his goddaughter, taking in the sights. He has known for months of her intentions but he can see that her magic has settled around her. He's not sure why or what has changed but he's hopeful that it won't have a negative impact on her.

~MJB~

Draco was waiting just outside the doors to the study room, driving himself nuts trying to figure out what's happening inside. He's tempted to use a spell but he doesn't know any will allow him to eavesdrop on the conversation. He's also unsure if he wants to risk the wards of the house coming down on him for using magic. With a sigh he crosses his arms as he continues to walk back and forth before the door.

It's times like these he sincerely wishes he was as studious as his cousin. Perhaps then he would be familiar with spells, enough to know which to use in this situation. He's sure that Meissa would know what spell to use in this incident. She seems to know too many spells - it's a wonder they haven't had to take her to a Healer for magical exhaustion.

Draco wonders if she's really that magically strong or if she just pushes herself to the upper limits of her magical core. They're only twelve years old but sometimes he feels that she acts she's older than her age. There are times when he feels that she doesn't know or have limits for herself.

When he lets himself think about it he feels that maybe it's better that he's nothing like Meissa.

As he feels himself go round and round in his thoughts he hears the click of the lock turning. Relieved to find a distraction to his thoughts about Meissa's tendencies he turns to the door. When the door swings open he sees his cousin first. The instant he sees her he's struck with a single thought.

Her magic, which has always felt chaotic and unrestrained, feels as if it has finally settled itself around her. He senses that her magic has found a purpose, settling around her shoulders like a cloak. As he observes this he can see the serenity in her expression and the determination.

"What did I miss?" Draco demands, trying to figure out the reason for why she feels and looks different.

It's not the hair. Half is still bound back in a braid while the rest fell around her shoulders in its usual curly mess. She's not wearing her earrings so her hair is brown with its usual red tint. It makes her seem less intimidating.

The clothes are the same. Black trousers and a long-sleeved charcoal grey button up shirt with silver buttons. Rather simple and he has no doubt that Meissa's clothes are not made of the best material possible for someone of her status.

"Draco," he hears his mother's voice reprimand him before he sees her behind his cousin. "That's no way to speak to the new Lady Black," she continues.

"LADY BLACK?!" he shouts before his eyes immediately sought out his cousin's hands. He instantly spots the House ring and knew several things at once.

One: it'd explain why her magic has settled itself around her instead of being chaotic as usual.

Two: Meissa has been accepted by the Black magic as the latest Lady of the House.

Three: Meissa is emancipated. She has to be or else she won't be recognized in Wizengamot and the voting right of the Black seat would remain with the current proxy.

All of this occurred to him in seconds of him seeing the signet ring on his cousin's finger.

This changes so many things and he cannot begin to understand the far reaching implications.

"Drake," Meissa sighs at her cousin as he stared at her as if she has grown another head. "This doesn't change anything between us."

"It changes everything," Draco counters. There's so many protocols dictating interactions with the Head of a Family - he feels conflicted cause he's related but he's also the heir apparent of the Malfoy family.

Meissa rolls her eyes at her cousin's antics. "Honestly," she shakes her head at him before glancing at her aunt and godfather. She's not entirely sure how to proceed. She hadn't actually considered things changing like her Draco's antics is suggesting.

"Draco's… reaction could have been better," Narcissa remarks, a fine eyebrow arched at her son, "but it is a good indication of what to expect once you resume schooling."

Meissa scowls as she crosses her arms. She's already well known in the school for her temper and outbursts. Now she'll have to deal with the various people gauging her, her politics, and gods know what else. This is something she hasn't considered when she requested the paperwork.

"Draco, if you don't treat me like you normally do," Meissa starts in a mild threatening tone.

The blonde made no attempt to argue this, knowing full well what that tone meant. "So, what's your first business of the day?" he asks, trying to switch attention from Meissa's newfound status.

"She currently has a present to open," Narcissa intercedes before Meissa could say anything. The brunette looks at her, arching an eyebrow in question before getting directed to look at her godfather.

Confused - she actually forgotten that she hadn't retrieved anything from her godfather - she looks to find that he has a wrapped package held out to her. It's wrapped in a simple patterned wrapping paper with dragons flying about. Curious she quickly undid the wrapping, opening the box to find several smaller boxes hidden within. With a frown she takes the box over to a table and went about opening the smaller boxes.

One turns out to be a set of earrings. Weirdly enough though, the earrings do not match. One of the earring seems to combine two styles she has seen before. A hoop earring that looks like it will barely wrap around her earlobe with an actual feather - it looks like a raven feather - attached to the hoop. The other earring is a stud earring with a diamond stone set in a shape of a five points star.

She can sense several layers of magic around the earrings, just like the ones currently sitting in her jewelry box. "What are these for?" she asks softly, looking at her godfather.

"They have the same enchantments as the previous ones," Snape explains. He doesn't say anything more since Draco is still doesn't know the full detail of what happened. But it's enough for Meissa to know what he means. She can imagine that the glamours have been separated into the two earrings. She'll have to figure out which one later on.

She set aside the box and selects another to open, finding a ring nestled within. It's small and made of a thin wire twisted into a pattern she vaguely recognizes as Celt in nature. She doesn't know the meaning of the knot but she can hazard a guess that it will offer her some form of protection. Extracting it from the box she finds that it'd only fit on her thumb so she decides to place it on her left thumb.

There's a part of her that's relieved there's no rush of magic or the sensation of a spell settling onto her. She has so many items on her that has magic worked into them. It's actually remarkable that the magic hasn't clashed in some way.

The remaining two boxes contains, she finds, a sketchpad with a set of tools and a detailed book about runes from the various cultures - both modern and ancient.

Meissa looks up to her godfather and without saying a word she wraps her arms around him in thanks.


	10. Sincerity

_**Hi everyone, I hope this chapter finds you in good health. This will be the last chapter pertaining to Meissa's birthday. After this we will finally get into the adventures the girls will have in the Muggle world.**_

 _ **Chapter 10: Sincerity**_

July 1st, 1992  
Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

Meissa's first order of business, after putting away her presents and retrieving her familiar, was to simply spend time with her cousin. It's the first time she has seen him since their First year at Hogwarts has ended and she's rather curious about how things are going for him. Aunt Cissy and their godfather are, from last she checked, were discussing something that didn't pertain to them.

"So," she starts in a light tone, "how has your summer been so far?"

Draco looks at her for a long moment. "Father's been… teaching me."

"About family secrets?" she questions, toeing the line of proper etiquette. They're cousins but they essentially belonged in separate families. As the new Head of her Family there's a line she has to be aware of now when she discuss things with her cousin.

"For… for the most part."

She's not entirely sure of what to make of the tone in her cousin's voice. She's gotten so used to him being self-assured that it's rather off putting to hear the hesitation.

If she didn't know her uncle as well as she did she would have assumed that he was punishing Draco harshly. Uncle Lucius, as much as she dislikes him, would not lay a hand on his one and only son. She sincerely doubts he would even cast - no… she would not even swear her magic on it. She suspects that he would if he believes his son would benefit from the lesson.

In many ways Lucius Malfoy reminds her of a shark.

"Anything you want to talk about?" she asks carefully, idly running her fingers along her familiar's back.

"I… I'm not entirely sure of what to make of what he's been teaching me," Draco remarks as one of the House elves delivered refreshments and snacks for them.

"Is it something your mother would disapprove of?"

She didn't miss the grimace on her cousin's face.

"I suspect she would."

Meissa nods her head slightly, thinking about what he has said. If Aunt Narcissa would disapprove of whichever her husband is teaching Draco then… she's certainly concerned. "Will you be okay for the month?"

Draco doesn't answer her for a long moment, causing her to study him carefully. He doesn't look any different than usual. Same slicked back hair. Same round features, although she did detect a small bit of difference. It seems like he has lost a bit of baby fat along the cheeks. She studies his face for a bit longer before finally noting that his skin tone seems to be paler than usual.

It seems like he's troubled by something and she doubts Draco will be able to tell her if it involves his father and/or family related.

"I will be okay," Draco finally says in a low voice, holding the cup of tea close.

"Mm. Just try and stay true to yourself," she advises him, knowing there's nothing else she can truly say to him.

He doesn't say anything for a long moment before a sigh escaped him. "I'm not so sure that."

Meissa made a slight noise at that. "You know who are you, Dray. Before we started schooling at Hogwarts, you were someone who would've never said the things you have this past year." She watches him set the cup of tea down with a sharp clink, fully aware that she could've phrased that better. "Do what you think Aunt Cissy would approve and not what she would disapprove."

~MJB~

It was nearly six in the evening when Meissa's aunt and cousin finally departed for their home.  
Severus went into his study to review his notes after ensuring Meissa was set for the rest of the night. He also took a sample of her blood - something about testing her blood for any allergy reaction to the regime. He also left clear instructions for the House elves to ensure that she is well taken care of for the rest of the night.

She's rather used to his focus on his potions that she doesn't really protest the whole situation. His focus has been a constant for her, a constant in the storm that has been her life. He's predictable as much as her godfather would hate to admit it. It's something she doesn't hold against him because she knows. She knows that his focus on potions, on the regime, is his way of caring.

In any case, once he was in his study and the house elves have finished fussing over her, she decided to retreat upstairs. At first she had every intention of going to her room but, as she stood by the staircase she felt a pull to go one more floor. With a frown she sets the kitten down on the ground, telling her familiar to stay out of trouble. She gets a grumpy protest from the kitten but the familiar turns and ran straight down the hall without further comments.

Amused by her familiar's reaction she walks up to stairs to the third floor. Barely half up the stairs she hears the familiar greeting from her mother's portrait. Unbidden a smile appears on her face as she rushes up the last of the steps and stood in front of the portrait.

She stands in front of her mother's portrait, nervously bouncing on the ball of her feet. Bellatrix, after watching her daughter for some time, starts to laugh. "Dearie, you look like someone who has eaten too much cake!" Meissa blushes and made an effort to stop bouncing. "Happy birthday, dearie," the raven-haired woman smiles at her daughter.

"Thank you," Meissa gave her mother a broad smile. She crosses her arms when she feels herself about to fidget again.

"Twelve years old," Bellatrix remarks softly, her sharp features softening slightly with regret. "I had so… so much I wanted to with you."

Meissa tugs on a strand of her hair, twirling it around her fingers as she bites her lip. "I… I wished we had that," she confesses softly.

"I know, dearie." Bellatrix sighs as she shakes her head, crossing her arms in a manner not unlike her daughter's. "Regardless, you have grown." Bellatrix gestures to her daughter, "I've seen you grown into a fine young lady."

Meissa smiles shyly at her mother. "Thanks mother."

Bellatrix laughs slightly. "Mother? I thought you'd be calling me mumma." The raven-haired girl blushes as she covers her face, prompting her mother to crackle in amusement. "Since when have you been calling me mother?" Bellatrix asks after she finally managed to stop crackling.

"I… Since I was old enough."

"Ah… since you were old enough to be told about my crimes."

Meissa grimaces at the blunt statement but made no attempt to refute it. "You will always be my Ma," she starts before she straightens her back and looks determinedly at her mother.

"But I've left you the responsibilities of the House," Bellatrix remarks before her daughter could continue. The raven-haired woman gestures to her daughter's hand where the signet ring was visible. "Twelve years old and already you're the Lady Black."

"You don't believe I can do this?"

"I believe you can," her mother counters. "I have no doubt that you can do whatever you set your mind to."

With that Bellatrix waved her hand towards the door, which led to the telltale click of the door unlocking, before disappearing out of the frame. Meissa blinks at this before she takes the cue for as it was. She mutters a bye to her mother's portrait before she enters the safe room.

Once the door has shut behind her she takes her time to cross the room. She has already removed several books from the shelves, at the moment they're currently sitting on her desk waiting to be read. She wants to say she hasn't taken any of the weapons down from their slots on the wall but that would be lying. She did take one that was similar to what she used to practice with when she was younger and took fencing classes.

She had fenced for a little bit when she was younger but stopped after she turned eight years old. She can't exactly remember why she quit in the first place but after a few close calls she had to admit that playing around with the sword wasn't a good idea. Tripping over one's own feet with a honed sword made for a heart stopping story - not that she'll ever tell anyone. Certainly not to a certain blonde Slytherin and brunette Gryffindor. She values her life a bit too much to ever relate the story to them.

She finally reaches the table where the Pensieve is and, after a moment of hesitation, locates the bottle for her 12th birthday. As she studies the untidy scrawl on the label she debates if she wants to know her mother's message. She wants to know what her mother planned for her twelfth birthday but at the same time she's unsure if she'd able to handle the disappointment. To know just how much she meant to her mother.

Meissa stares at the clear glass vial, watching as the mist swirls within until she finally removes the stopper and pours the memory into the basin. Before she could psych herself out she dives into the memory.

~MJB~

"Jehanna!" _Bellatrix calls out as she walks through the newly built house, heading to the second floor. She didn't get an answer as she follows the sound of her daughter's cries._ "Jehanna, where are you?"

 _By the time she has reached her daughter's nursery she still hasn't gotten a response but decided to worry about it later. Instead she goes to her daughter's cradle, picking the crying toddler up with a soft shush._ "Hey," _she whispers to the girl, petting Meissa's thick russet curls._ "What's wrong baby girl?" _She carries the toddler over to the changing table._ "Do you have a full pamper?"

 _She lays the toddler down before she cast a few spells to change Meissa out of her dirty pamper and into a clean one along with a new outfit._ "There we go," _she coos to the sniffling toddler. Warm brown eyes, rimmed with tears, looks up at her as she tries to get her daughter to cheer up. With a smile on her face she gently catches Meissa's tiny fists and gets her to laugh._

Meissa stares at the scene as she watched her mother play with her younger version. She follows her throughout the whole house, watching how her mother cared for her instead of leaving her to the house elves like she knows most purebloods do. Throughout the whole memory, her mother spoke to her, telling her stories that - to Meissa's surprise - did not once involve the war or anything related to the Dark Arts.

To find out that her mother isn't as obsessed with her precious Dark Lord is a shock. She's so used to people telling her how fanatical her mother that to see an actual contradiction to popular belief makes her wonder.

She's still not sure who Jehanna is - no one ever did respond to the name - but she has to wonder if it's the same person who wrote the book. It's not altogether a common name, to her understanding.

"Bella," _Meissa hears a warm voice as footsteps approached her mother. She turns to look at the owner of the voice but before she could see their face the memory ended and she was left facing her mother who had a grin on her face that looks similar to the one she has seen on her own face._

"Happy Birthday, Meissa," _Bellatrix says with a light laugh._ "I hope you didn't get too embarrassed watching me take care of your one years old version. In case you didn't realize, it's the day after your first birthday with me," _Bellatrix continues._ "I was going to show your first birthday but… well, let's just say your first birthday was a bit too crazy and there are some things best forgotten." _Bellatrix laughs awkwardly before she clears her throat, straightening up._ "I know that if you're watching this it means… well, I hope, if nothing else, you know that I love you." _Bellatrix crosses her arms with an awkward look on her face, her fingers alternating between her dress and hair._ "I promise, dearie, that I will always love you and I will always be proud of you."

~MJB~

 **Sorry for the cliffy but I'm sure all of those who have followed The Proud and Noble Black, can imagine Meissa's reaction to the memory. In any case, is anyone curious about what happened on Meissa's first birthday with Bellatrix?**


	11. Packing

Chapter 11 - Packing

July 3rd, 1992  
Location: Nigri Sanctuarium

Meissa grumbles to herself as she struggles to make her clothes fit into her bag without using magic.

How the bloody hell does Hermione do it?

As she mutters and curses under her breath, she tosses everything out of her bag to start once more. For the third time. In an hour.

She folds her clothes to the best of her ability, attempting to make them compact. She has seen Remmy do it a few times since she first got the clothes. Each time though, the end result looks like a child of a warthog's backside and the slime from a toad. At most she can figure that she has a long way to go before she can say that she's capable of taking care of herself. In any case her folding could use a lot of work, although it's safe to say that if she used magic it'd be a major step up in comparison.

But no, she's determined to do this, one way or another. Especially without magic.

Once she has folded the clothes to her low, low standards she stats to pack them into the bag. She lines the bottom of the bag with the jeans and cargo shorts. Once she has all her trousers and cargo shorts packed away she turns her attention to the shirts. Since she prefers the style of layering two shirts she has every intention of taking each of the twenty shirts she bought. The long sleeved shirts also serve the purpose of hiding the holster for her wand.

She had considered bringing along Morgen's wand but in the end decided it would be better off to leave it behind. She doesn't fancy explaining to Hermione or Daphne why she has a second wand - since it's frowned upon for any witch or wizard to own an extra wand. She wants to say that the oath would prevent her from removing the wand from Nigri Sanctuarium but ever since she was accepted as the new Lady Black she had not felt the weight of the oath. In the few times she felt like using her magic, she had not felt the weight of the oath reminding her to refrain from using the wand unsupervised. She suspects being accepted as the new Lady nullified the oath - maybe because she's now considered an adult?

She'll have to test this out eventually but for the time being she just needs to pack her clothes. With a determined huff she starts arranging the clothes into the bag, grumbling to herself that it would be so much easier to just enlarge the space within. One part of her is amazed that non-magicals can go through life without magic while the rest is appreciative of the fact she has magic to make life easier.

What does that say about her as a person?

"Meissa," she hears her godfather's voice before the door to her room opened. She looks up from her packing to find that he has another bag for her. "I don't think that one bag will be enough for you," he jests, handing over a bag that is roughly the same size as the one she's using.

"But -," Meissa starts to protest, looking up at her godfather.

"Muggles don't always pack everything in one bag," Severus reminds her, sitting down on the bed next to her. "Sometimes more than one bags are necessary," he comments, getting a pout from the twelve years old girl.

"I thought… well… I thought I could make everything fit with one bag," she mutters grumpily.

"With as many shirts you're bringing you won't be able to limit yourself with only one bag."

"Should I cut back on the clothes?"

"You've found a style that you like," Severus points out, reminding her that it had taken a bit to find something she'd like. Much longer than he personally liked in any case. Meissa takes one look at him and realizes the unspoken part of his comment. 'If you don't take the damn shirts I will find a way to make you repay for the lost time.'

It may not match up with what truly went on in her godfather's head but she reckons it was close enough.

Deciding that it was best to go along with her godfather's wisdom on the matter she takes the second bag and starts packing some of her clothes into it. For the most part, with two bags, everything was able to fit better and she had plenty of room left over for a few items.

"Uncle Sev? What else should I bring?" she asks once her clothes have been packed - some of the more shoddy folds were redone by her godfather in an effort to ensure everything fits.

"Let's see… you have your shirts," Severus starts drily with Meissa chiming in with a 'check', "trousers, shorts." He arches an eyebrow at her before he clears his throat. "Pants?" he asks with only the slightest of hesitation. She makes a herculean effort not to even make a sound remotely similar to mirth as she checks that one off.

"Holster?"

She makes a show of pulling back the sleeve of her shirt to reveal the ever-present holster with her wand. "Check."

"Portkey?"

She taps her chest, exactly where the pendent portkey hung from a simple yet sturdy chain. "Check." She gives her godfather a look. "I meant things for the bags."

"Your wand and emergency portkey are the most important items you need," Severus retorts before he relents and genuinely makes an effort to help her pack. One of the things he made sure she had was her potion regime. She is still at the point where she needs to be taking it twice daily but so far she's on the right track - something he's sure he has Meissa's friends and house-elf to thank for.

Of course, the real challenge will be when she reaches the seventh month. But he has roughly three months before she reaches that point so hopefully he'll find a solution to the problem beforehand. In any case, because of the amount of doses she will need he'll have to visit every week to hand her a fresh batch. It would also give him an opportunity to ensure everything is okay - magic wise.

Aside from the potions - both the regime and her migraine potions - Meissa packed a few trinkets and a book. The trinkets themselves were common wizarding toys but the book had him arching an eyebrow in curiosity. From the brief glimpse he got it seems like it's a book about warding but he's not entirely sure why she'd be interested in something like that.

He wonders if the reason for her interest is because of the visit to Ms. Granger's house. There are not many books that have reliable information about wards and some forms of wards are illegal due to the fact they are based in blood. If he remembers right, at least one of the wards is blood based and most if not all of the Black estates are protected by the same kind. He vaguely recalls Meissa mentioning plans to update the wards.

He hopes that's the reason for her interest.

He'll have to monitor her interests a bit more closely to prevent another incident. He still can't believe that Meissa has dabbled into blood magic. He knows it is only a slippery slope from there. According to the house elves she has been making attempts to use simple spells and getting sporadic results. With her sensitivity to magic he suspects that there will be some time before the last traces of the blood magic - it'd be worth observing this for future reference.

If it wasn't for the fact he feels that he has to prepare for the next time Meissa ventures into dark magic. There is no doubt in his mind that she would dabble into dark magic again if the situation suits her.

"I think I'm situated now," Meissa declares, snapping Severus from his thoughts. A glance into the bags reveals that she has packed the basic hygiene products and - to his surprise - the jewelry box that would normally contain her earrings.

"Do you plan on removing the glamours?" he questions in a light tone, keeping his tone neutral to keep from passing judgment.

"I think it's better to be safe rather than sorry," she confesses, plucking the box out to reveal to him that the old pair is currently nestled within. He cannot fault her this logic and simply nods his head in acceptance.

"Very well then," he stands and moves the bags from her bed as she draws back the blankets. "Sleep well," he mutters, brushing back her hair once she has settled under the covers. With the earrings removed her light brown eyes remind him strongly of Meissa's parents. It's not a sight he sees often anymore - not since Meissa's ninth birthday and Narcissa gifted the glamour earrings to their goddaughter.

' _Reinforce the family resemblance'_ was Narcissa's take on the matter. He thought it would've been better to reduce the family resemblance if the goal was to protect Meissa.

But he had been overruled and Meissa never argued against wearing the earrings. He's still unsure if it was because she wanted to hide the scars from herself and anyone else.

"Good night," Meissa mutters as she snuggles into her pillow.

He takes a brief second to set up an alarm to alert him if Meissa was to suffer from a nightmare before he takes his leave. Instead of returning to his potion labs he decides to retire to his study room, heading straight to one of the bookshelves to retrieve an old photo album from the top.

There have never been a lot of photos he was willing to be in. So the rare few he has were cherished only because it reminds him of better days - of a time when things were not at their worse. Lily Evans was the best thing that has ever happened to him. Losing her friendship was the absolute worst and he knows, looking back to that time, he only has himself to blame.

There used to be a time when he would wish things had played out differently but it only hurts him more to think of that. Living with Meissa has taught him to stop excusing the things he has done. He lost Lily because he allowed himself to be suckered into Lucius' lies of a better world. He lost Lily because, in the end, he chose the purebloods over his muggleborn best friend.

Potter's involvement in the whole situation did not help matters but he knows that ultimately it is his own fault and no one else's.

Looking at the photo album, which contained the few photos he has of Lily, were precious to him. There were some pictures of other people who eventually became important to him for one reason or another. He has a limited few of Bellatrix with Meissa, the five months child smiling broadly at Bellatrix in one of the photos.

He pauses on a page that contains a large photo that he knows is supposed to contain three people within. He can see Bellatrix and the nearly one years old Meissa but it seems that Bellatrix's partner would not be seen tonight. He cannot remember when was the last time he saw the three of them together. He suspects it will be a long while before he sees them together again in the photo. It was a pity because he's fairly sure Meissa would enjoy seeing her parents together.

Severus continues through the album until he arrives at the pages containing photos with Meissa and Draco. There were a small few that had Meissa's babysitters with her. A Third Year Ravenclaw and a Second Year Hufflepuff - if he remembers right - were often the ones volunteering to babysit for his ward when she joined him a month into the year. He's not entirely sure of the names - it has been about six years if not more.

He is somewhat sure that the Hufflepuff is a girl that has given him issue the entire time she was there at Hogwarts. As he watches the three girls in the photo he sees the Hufflepuff girl's features change. In that instant he is reminded of a student who had this particular talent to aggravate the living hell out of him.

Nymphadora Tonks.

Now reminded of his charge's babysitters he can put a name to the Ravenclaw. Kiera Sheridan. He remembers that she has taken on the challenge of becoming an Auror. He recalls that Sheridan is one of the more successful students to have graduated Hogwarts in recent memories - despite her friendship with Tonks. The Ravenclaw had been a near prodigal in his potion classes and he can recall the praises she had received from the other professors as well. He has no doubt that she would do well in her chosen career.

Nymphadora Tonks, on the other hand, well he has no hope for her achieving her goals. Although her dedication and sheer stubbornness is something of note. Still, he'd both impressed and worried for the Wizarding World if the former Hufflepuff manages to become an Auror.


	12. It's the Apocalypse!

**So, it should be noted that I'm currently working on chapter 15 in this fic. I don't think I have much to say other than thank you for the reviews, follows, and favorites.**

 **Chapter 12: It's the Apocalypse!**

July 4th, 1992  
Location: Leaky Cauldron

Meissa is seated, with her godfather, in the corner of Leaky Cauldron. She has selected a seat that ultimately limits access to herself with her godfather forming an extra barrier. The raven haired girl had grown bored in the past fifteen minutes, long fingers twisting around the star diamond stud on her right ear - she actually has to force herself to leave the feather earring alone. Every time she catches wind of the aroma wafting from the kitchen she can hear her stomach rumble in response.

Next to her, Severus is the ideal picture of calm - which is something she never thought would go in a sentence together. It had taken some time to convince her godfather to make an effort in cleaning up his appearance before leaving Nigri Sanctuarium. For the first time since they've arrived home from Hogwarts, his hair has been washed free of the accumulated oil from constantly attending to his potions. He had chosen to tie his hair back in a low ponytail - she's fond of this style mostly for the fact it tends to make seem less imposing.

She cycles through several nervous ticks as she waits for Hermione or Daphne to arrive. Meissa puts her fingers together, crossing and uncrossing them as she fidgets. The tips of her nails occasionally tracing the Celtic patterns on her thumb ring. When she catches herself tracing the crest on her signet ring she must remind herself that it is under a strong glamour. She had originally thought to make it seem like there isn't a ring there but a comment from her godfather made her realize a fact.

A glamour would not hide the touch of metal in a handshake.

With an unhappy noise she forces herself to still her movements, idly straightening the sleeves of the unbuttoned black and grey flannel shirt. Her hand double checking that she has her wand secured in its holster. Reassured that she has her wand, she tugs on the dark grey shirt she is wearing beneath the flannel, briefly wondering about the 'Never tell me the odds' phrase contrasting the dark material. The witch notes, with a grimace, that the palm of her hands is slick with sweat and wipes them dry on the dark blue jeans she paired with the shirts.

She actually regrets her initiative because she wants to pass the time by braiding her hair. She had thought it would be best to braid her hair while its still somewhat wet. Someone, Daphne she thinks, had told her it would be better to braid the unruly mess while it is somewhat tamed by the recent shower. Unfortunately, it gives her one less thing to do while she waits for her friends and, a glance at her godfather confirms this, Severus is not in a talkative mood.

In the past fifteen minutes - or is it twenty now? - Meissa has gotten a few looks from the other patrons. She has to assume it's because of the non-magical outfit she is wearing. It has not escaped her notice that literally every other person is dressed in a traditional robe and a traveling cloak. A glance at their feet would confirm to the young Lady that they are wearing boots. Her godfather is wearing his usual outfit - which consists of a black coat over a white shirt and a pair of black trousers. Not exactly a traditional wizarding outfit but usually his cloak covers majority of his clothes.

In an effort to distract herself she draws one of the menus closer to herself, perusing the options for later. She vaguely remembers plans to have a midday meal before heading to Hermione's. She thinks it is so that her godfather can have the opportunity to acquaint himself with the Grangers - something about having to make frequent visits. She reckons it's just him being a worrywart.

"Meissa!"

She looks up to see a familiar mane of hair rushing through the crowd. The young Lady barely has time to register this before she abandons her seat and rounds the table. Meissa has just braced herself when the rushing Gryffindor throws herself into the raven haired girl's arms with an excited laugh.

With a soft laugh she squeezes Hermione close, wayward brown hair filling her vision as she basks in the hug. She didn't realized how much she missed the Gryffindor until she's right there in front of her. But, before long, she releases Hermione as she suppresses the urge to shudder and run for the nearest exit. Meissa frowns to herself, unhappy about how short the hug had been, but finds that she's unwilling to initiate another so soon.

Before she can sink into a bout of self-loathing she spies the approach of a couple. A tall man with dark brown hair - he has somewhat of a buzzed cut along the sides with longer strands combed to one side. He's dressed in a fashion that seems casual and yet formal with a button up shirt with its' sleeves folded to the elbows and a pair of trousers not unlike her own. Other than that, he's much too far away from her to make out any more details.

Her first thought of him is that he's rather plain. Barely a heartbeat later she tells herself to not judge.

Next to the man, whom she assumes is Hermione's father, is a woman with long dark brown wavy hair. The shade of brown is closer to Hermione's dark golden brown - it'd be fair to say that Hermione's hair has some hint of red. It's rather plain to Meissa that her friend has inherited her mother's hair - although it seems like Hermione's mother is better able to manage the craziness of her own hair from the way her hair falls in loose ringlets. There's a graceful air about her as she moves - it reminds her vaguely of her Aunt Cissy, not that she'll ever tell her godmother that. She suspects her aunt would throw a fit to discover that her friend's mother is capable of moving like her.

While she has been distracted by her thoughts, the couple manages to arrive at the table - sparing a glance around. The woman gives Meissa a sort of smile that gives her a sense of warmth as she brushes Hermione's wayward hair from her face.

"You must be Meissa," the woman says with that same smile on her face, "Hermione has told us so much about you."

"Good things, I hope," rolls off Meissa's tongue before she can really stop them. She grimaces at the words and hopes she won't be judged too harshly for it.

"Songbird has been singing nothing but praises about you," the man scoffs good naturedly. Up close she can see that his face has a bit of a strong jaw line, his dark eyes meeting hers jovially. She could see a little bit of Hermione in him - or rather, she can see him in Hermione's features.

"Songbird?" she questions the Gryffindor, getting a blush and a mumbled response.

"Ahem."

Oops.

"Pardon," she excuses, stepping back and bringing everyone's attention to her godfather who has been standing by their table. "Mr. and Mrs. Granger, this is my legal guardian, Severus Snape. He's our Potion Professor at our school," she introduces, getting a gobsmacked look from Hermione.

Ah.

So there was something she had forgotten to inform Hermione about.

Whoops.

"Ah, hello," Mr. Granger offers his hand to the Potion Master, shaking hands firmly with the raven haired man. "You both can call me Henry," he informs them. "And this is my wife, Jean."

"Meissa," Hermione whispers as the adults sat down at their table, "you didn't mention that Professor Snape is your guardian!"

"He's my godfather," the raven haired girl whispers back. "I didn't think it'd be a good idea to say anything since the boys had their theories."

"Okay, I get not saying at first but still!"

Meissa rolls her eyes at Hermione's rather understandable freak out.

"He's not going to dock you points if you do something he distastes," she reassures.

"No but I might get ideas," Severus calls over to the girls, causing Hermione to flush while Meissa simply gives him a wide cheeky grin.

She slips into a seat next to her godfather who returns to her the menu she had dropped in her haste.

"So, it's to our understanding that this would be your first trip to the - what's the word you use?" Henry looks at his daughter.

"Most tend to use muggle," Snape supplies before Hermione could.

"I prefer to use either mundane or non-magical," Meissa chimes in, peering over her menu.

"Non-magical does seem to imply it's either a magical or non-magical world," Jean remarks thoughtfully. "The same could be said about mundane."

"Mum," Hermione all but whines.

"You're right," Meissa looks at her friend for a second before she focuses her full attention at Hermione's mother. "Mundane or Non-Magical is hardly better but the word Muggle is almost a slur and I don't like that. So, I'm sorry but I rather use the lesser of two evils."

Silence fills the table after Meissa's outburst. The twelve years old shifts uncomfortably until her godfather settles his arm across her shoulders - the weight anchoring in the moment. Jean looks thoughtful, as if she's turning over Meissa's words repeatedly in her own head. Hermione is smiling reassuringly at Meissa, having been originally been the one who heard the whole tirade once before.

Henry, on the other hand, simply sips his glass of water. "So," he starts once he sees that no one has any intention of breaking the silence. "First time or no?"

"Er… I have limited exposure," Meissa remarks after trying to figure out what he could possibly mean by that. Hermione's mouthing 'Mundane' to her helped a tiny bit. "Uncle Sev has taken me shopping a few times," she elaborates, gesturing to her guardian. Receiving a look of shock from Hermione at the casual term she has for her godfather.

Henry turns to Severus at this, probably intending to ask some questions, so Meissa takes this opportunity to lean across to Hermione. "Is this going to be weird," she asks the other girl, ignoring the distant roar of the Floo network working.

"It passed weird ages ago."

"Oh."

"What did I miss?" they suddenly hear, prompting the girls to look up.

"Daphne!" Hermione hops out of her seat and gave the other girl a hug. "I'm glad you could make it."

"I am as well," Daphne returns the hug, perhaps not as tight as Hermione's but the gesture was at least progress.

When Hermione releases Daphne, the blonde turns towards Meissa who has been waiting off to the side for the exchange to end.

"Meissa," the blonde starts before she gets swept up into an embrace by the raven haired girl. The action startles Daphne so much she doesn't return the gesture until she feels Meissa's grasp loosening. Realizing what's happening the blonde wraps her arms securely around the other girl - when did she get so tall? - and holds her close. The warm breath washing over the blonde's neck prompts a slight shiver from her but still she holds onto Meissa.

The shock of getting a hug from Meissa fades as she cherishes the warmth of her friend for as long as she could.

Longer than she ever had before.

Meissa willingly giving Daphne a hug - and a long one at that - was startling to both Snape and Hermione.

Was the apocalypse happening?


	13. Hugs and Lies

I apologize for long gaps between chapters - work has been rather hectic. And unfortunately I've also started up classes. So, I literally have no time to write.

Please enjoy the chapter and stick around for a few things at the end.

~MJB~

Chapter 13 - Hugs and Lies

July 4th, 1992  
Location: Leaky Cauldron

It takes longer than usual for the hug between the Slytherins to end - a new record for Meissa in general and, if she lets herself think about it too long, it felt good. It's a thought she doesn't let sink in. Without much fanfare she gathers it up into a ball and tosses it into one of the pools in the recesses of her mind.

Meissa squeezes herself back into her seat with Daphne claiming the seat next to her. The booth, not meant to hold three adults and three growing girls, feels cramp but no one suggests the relocating to another table. Snape, after receiving Meissa's order for lunch, turns to the Grangers and engages them in a conversation about the group's litany for the week.

Meissa turns to Hermione with the intention of asking her about their summer plans when she notices, for the first time, that Daphne is wearing a dress. It is sleeveless and seems to be a straight cut, with the hem of the skirt seemingly cut to end somewhere above her knees. She blinks as she struggles not to stare, her mind finally registering that she had felt smooth skin under her fingers as she hugged the blonde close. Twisting and tumbling over the colors of Daphne's dress - a deep green/blue at the collar before gradually fading into a pretty shade that reminds of her of aquamarine.

Is it her imagination or does she sees something that looks like stars?

"Meissa?"

"Mm?"

A hand finds hers under the table, both startling her from her thoughts as well as drawing her attention to Daphne. She sees the amused smile on Daphne's face and realizes that one of them must have spoken to her.

"Are you okay?"

"Er. I um," she swallows thickly before she plasters a smile on her face, bewildered by how tongue tied she feels, "Yes…?"

"Do you not want to go to the museum?" Hermione asks, just barely keeping herself from voicing her concerns as Meissa fidgets under the joint gaze of her friends.

"Oh, we're doing that today?" Meissa inquires.

"I think she was referring tomorrow's agenda," Daphne corrects softly, giving Meissa's hand a gentle squeeze before letting go. This simple action draws the raven haired girl's attention to the fact that they had been holding hands for who knows how long.

Meissa stares at her hand, flexing her fingers as she ponders how the constant touch escaped her attention. The realization that she isn't freaking out about the prolonged contact startles her. Confused she takes Daphne's hand back in her own, in turn startling the blonde from the conversation with Hermione.

"What kind of museum are we visiting?" Meissa questions, using her other hand to hold the menu flat to peruse.

"It's the National History Museum," Hermione explains. "It's been open since the 1850s and there's loads of stuff to see."

Meissa tilts her head, trying to remember if they've discussed anything like this. "Is it something we'd be able to understand?" She exchange looks with Daphne, the Slytherin girls exchanging smirks as they decide to tease the brunette. "Or is it going to be full of stuff you'll geek over?"

"I do _not_ geek out!"

"Just a little," Daphne brings up her free hand and indicates her opinion - her forefinger and thumb nearly two inches apart.

She gets an indignant protest from the Gryffindor girl, causing Meissa to snort in amusement. The trio drawing attention from the adults at the table. Snape rolls his eyes at them but his trademark sneer is nowhere to be seen. If the girls had been paying attention to him they would have seen the tiniest smile on his face.

"Honestly," Hermione huffs at the Slytherins.

"Aw, come on 'Mione," Meissa tries to placate her pouting friend. "You have to admit it's funny."

"Was not."

"It is," Daphne disagrees, smirking.

"The two of you together isn't fair," Hermione huffs.

"Fair?" Meissa and Daphne somehow manage to say at the same time. "What's that?"

Hermione looks at the two of them with an unfamiliar expression on her face.

"What?"

"I just realized something."

"Such as?" Daphne arches an eyebrow at the Gryffindor girl.

"You two are going to be the death of me."

"I don't know about that," Meissa drawls with a mischievous grin on her face.

Hermione points her finger at the raven haired girl. "That, that right there."

Daphne giggles, her fingers squeezing around Meissa's - a reminder of the endured contact.

"Are you ready to order, Songbird?" Henry interrupts before the girls could resume their banter.

"Oh." Hermione glances at the menu for the first time since they've arrived.

"We could share," Meissa suggests, pointing to one of the dishes on the menu.

"Firewhiskey-glazed pork belly chunks," Hermione reads, "Mm… okay, this one looks good. The cubes of belly pork are coated in 'sticky sweet firewhiskey marinade with soy, anise, and honey."

Daphne peers around Meissa's arm to take a look at her menu. "That sounds a bit too rich."

"Think it'll be too much for you?"

"Possibly. But then again, after Hogwarts nothing could be as rich as their food."

Meissa scoffs in agreement. "Even Remmy's cooking was better than theirs."

"What kind of cooking are you used to if you think Hogwarts' food is too rich?" Hermione asks, rolling her eyes at the pair.

"You'll see when it's my turn to host," Meissa promises with a cheeky grin.

"You fill me with such joy," Hermione states flatly.

"Hermione," Jane scolds, receiving a sheepish grin from her daughter.

Meissa presses a fist to her mouth, just barely muffling a snicker. She flat out starts laughing when Daphne nudges her, their hands separating for the first time since they've settled into their seats.

"Meissa!" Hermione narrows her eyes at the other girl but refrains from saying anything with her parents within earshot. But she gives her best friend a look promising revenge.

She simply gets another cheeky grin from Meissa.

~MJB~

After lunch Uncle Sev left Meissa with the Grangers, sternly telling her to behave herself and that he'll be checking in on her in a week. Everything she has already heard so she dutifully nods and pockets the shrunken bags. Outside the Leaky Cauldron, she follows Hermione's parents, the trio holding a quiet conversation as they discussed their plans for the summer. Hermione was being rather tight lipped about what she planned beyond the visit to the museum.

Despite all attempts to convince the Gryffindor girl to spill they make no progress - causing Meissa to pout while Daphne made a show of comforting the other girl.

"You two are so dramatic," Hermione rolls her eyes at the pair, doing a poor job of hiding her grin. Meissa opens her mouth to retort when she sees Henry and Jane approaching a rather large thing made from a combination of metal and glass.

Meissa frowns and studies the thing in front of her with a puzzled expression. "Any idea what it is?" she whispers to Daphne, receiving a nonchalant shrug from the blonde.

With a curious look on her face she walks up to it, tapping a finger on the surface.

"Is it your first time seeing a car up close?" Henry questions, putting a key in and the thing makes a noise, startling the witch back from it.

"Er," Meissa peers through the semi-clear glass. "I see these all the time when Uncle Sev and I go shopping."

"What exactly is a car?" Daphne questions, joining Meissa.

"I have so much to educate you on," Hermione remarks before she reaches between the two Slytherins and pulls on the handle, opening the door for them. "For now get in," she tries to usher them into the vehicle - Meissa acquiesces easily while Daphne has to be dragged in by the raven haired girl.

After the Slytherins were seated Hermione helps the blonde, showing them how to do it for next time. The two purebloods grumbling at the restrictive feeling but didn't attempt to unbuckle themselves - not that they could without being shown how to first. Which will be the first thing she'll show them _after_ they arrive at her house.

She shuts the door and buckles up before her parents reminds her to do so. She then settles back, explaining to the Slytherins about the workings of cars and vehicles. Meissa paid partial attention to Hermione - which is odd for her - and stares out the glass window. Daphne, on the other hand, questions everything there is to know about cars. Hermione did her best to answer but, as much as she likes to know everything, there were things she didn't quite know. Luckily Henry and Jane were able to fill in some of the gaps.

It doesn't take long for the topic of cars and vehicles to be exhausted and, unsure of what conversation to go with, Daphne falls silent. The blonde mutters to herself before she touches Meissa, drawing the other girl out of her thoughts.

"Mm?"

"What got you distracted?"

Meissa shrugs her shoulders idly, shifting slightly to look at the others comfortably. "I took on a few more responsibilities as of late," she finally confesses, figuring that it'd be better to be upfront. She's still not prepared to inform anyone about her status as the Lady Black but keeping it a secret from Hermione and Daphne wouldn't be smart.

"You're only twelve," Hermione reminds the other girl, "What responsibilities could you have taken on?"

"Songbird," Henry calls back, his voice carrying a slight warning. Hermione frowns but sits back with a grumble.

"I can only assume it has to do with your family again," Daphne remarks.

"It does," the brunette agrees easily. "Also, I've been working on some ideas about what happened." She meant to say more but the near frantic gestures from Hermione distracts her.

"What happened?" Jane asks, turning partially to look at them.

Meissa blinks under Jane's stern gaze and finds herself thinking that her Aunt Cissy really would have a fit. "Side effects from a project I was working on," she lies a bit too easily.

"Oh? What was the project?" Hermione's mother asks, curious. It's apparent now that Hermione doesn't talk much about Hogwarts - Meissa's not sure if it was restricted to the events surrounding the stone or just magic in general.

"The application of Alchemy mixed with Potions," Meissa answers smoothly, ignoring the quizzical look on her friends' faces.

"They're not the same?" Henry asks, glancing into the rear view mirror.

~MJB~

There's currently a blog dedicated to the story on tumblr. If you're interested please follow the blog for bits and pieces. The blog can be found at infinity-writing on tumblr

There is also a rendering of Meissa done by miss-goggles. I believe you should be able to locate it on the blog - it's really good. I belief if you do a search in the blog you should be able to look for the image. Just type in miss-googles in the search bar.


	14. Settling In

Chapter 14 - Settling In

July 4th, 1992  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

It doesn't take them long to arrive at Hermione's place, apparently she lives only thirty minutes away from Leaky Cauldron, and the first look Meissa gets of Hermione's house is…

Meissa tilts her head back as she takes in the sight of the three storied restored Victorian house. There's a lot of white trimming against the dark red coloring. There's plenty of windows - so many windows, where's the concept of privacy? A porch stretches around from the front and disappears around the corners, most likely continuing to the back of the house. She eyes the roof where she can see at least two small turrets - it's nothing like Hogwarts' - and several balconies for the rooms on the second floor. She can only imagine that the third floor must be strictly an attic or converted into something because it seems like there is one large bay window.

It's a truly impressive house that reminds her strongly of Nigri Sanctuarium.

"This is a house with quite the history," Daphne remarks, nodding in approval.

"Thank you," Hermione says before she realizes that there aren't any bags for either girls. "Uh, did you bring any changes of clothes?"

"Yes," they chime at the same time. Meissa produces two bags that fits in her palm easily while Daphne reveals to be carrying a shrunken trunk - the raven haired girl has no doubt that it's enchanted to be bottomless.

"And how do you plan on unshrinking it?" Hermione asks, crossing her arms.

"Magic," Meissa grins cheekily as Henry walks around the trio, shaking his head at their antics.

"In case you've forgotten," Hermione's voice begins to adopt a tone Meissa hasn't heard since the beginning of their first year. "We're not allowed to use magic outside of school."

Daphne arched an eyebrow at the other girl while Meissa ushers the pair up the stairs after Henry. The Slytherin brunette deciding that it'd be better off to have this conversation in the relative privacy of Hermione's house.

"Meissa, enough," Hermione shrugs off the other girl's hands once they're pass the front entrance.

Meissa waves off the dismissal, preoccupied in studying the foyer. It's a rather simple, the walls painted a shade of beige with the trimmings done in a dark treated unpainted wood. A simple patterned rug covers the hard wood floor that compliments the paint on the walls. She can see stairs leading to the next floor to her left, an open space to her right - it looks like a living room. Judging from the table and chairs at the end of the hall she imagines that to be the dining room.

"You have a beautiful home," Meissa finally compliments.

"Thank you," Jane hangs up her coat, taking the others' coats to do the same. "It's been in my family for generations."

Daphne taps Meissa's shoulder, a serious expression marring her face. The taller girl looks at Daphne and subtly shakes her head, already knowing what the blonde is trying to clue her in. She had felt it the second they've set foot on the property.

"Mom, can I show them to their rooms?"

"Of course."

Hermione gestures for them to follow her, leading them up to the second floor and pauses as she looks up another flight of stairs. "My parents' room is there," she points to a closed door in front of them. She walks away from the stairs and opens the next door. "This is my room," she says, moving aside so they could look.

The ceiling has been painted black with stars painted in imitation of the constellations. The walls were hard to see beyond the photos of Hermione, Henry, and Jane. But the majority of the room were occupied by bookshelves burdened with books both big and small. Against one wall, at the far end of the room, seems to be a bed. Except it's nothing like the ones she has seen before. For one, it seems to be raised high off the floor with a small ladder connecting the bed to the floor. In the gap between the bed and the floor is a desk and a chair.

"Wow, Hermione, you have your own personal library started," Meissa teases with a smirk.

"Don't you start!"

Daphne giggles as Hermione points a finger at Meissa with a scowl on her face. The raven haired girl leans back from the finger, the smirk still persistent.

"You're enjoying this too much," Hermione mock glares at the blonde, getting a cheeky grin from the others.

"If it makes you feel any better," Meissa starts in a lazy drawl, "you'll have a chance to tease me when we visit the Sanctuarium."

Hermione barely looks mollified by this and simply decides to usher the girls out of her room. "Do you want to share a room or have a separate room?" she asks, showing them where the bathroom is before pausing in front of the two remaining doors on the second floor.

The girls exchange looks with each other, talking without really having to say anything. "We can share," Meissa answers.

Hermione nods and opens the door at the far end of the house - it's the furthest from the staircase and from her parents and herself. It was the sort of privacy she imagines Meissa would desire the most out of the three of them. She doesn't question the decision for them to share a room - she imagines that it's borne from the familiarity of sharing a dorm room.

The room within is rather simple in its' decorations - often serving as a guest room for any of her visiting relatives. There's a dresser tucked away into the corner of the room with one wall of the room set up with two bookshelves and a desk.

"Where's the bed?" Daphne asks, looking around as Meissa continues looking around. There's a set of doors that - from what she can see - leads out to the balcony and several large artworks. The lack of bed is one of the things she noted but had assumed there was a reason for it.

"Right here," Hermione walks to the desk the girls had noticed and, with a tug of the handles, pulls down a bed.

"Ingenious," Daphne remarks as Hermione completely lowers the bed for them.

The mattress is still stripped bare from the last visit from her relatives so she leaves the room, allowing the two Slytherins to get situated as she went looking for the appropriate sheets.

"There's so much we don't know," Daphne remarks lightly, placing her shrunken trunk in an out of the way spot in the room and, with a tap of her wand, restored it to its' original size.

"Mhm," Meissa agrees as she sets her bag on the floor, returning them to their proper sizes. "Either way, one thing to keep in mind is to keep magic to a minimum."

"You don't honestly think that the Ministry will know we're using magic."

"We are in the non-magical community - they'll just blame Hermione if they detect any." She doubts this as she says it - she had filed a document with the Ministry, alerting them to the fact she was going to be in the non-magical word for the unforeseeable time and to ignore any uses of magic as a result. There's a benefit of her being acknowledged now and it's something she has every intention of utilizing to its' fullest.

"This is true. Also, magic doesn't mix well with their technology, correct?"

"That is the general knowledge yes."

Daphne eyes her best friend as a knock sounds on the door. "Why do I get the feeling you intend to experiment?"

Meissa heads to the door to let in Hermione. "I don't know where you got such a thought," she retorts, stepping aside for the other girl.

"What did I miss?" Hermione asks, giving Meissa a suspicious look.

"I think Meissa intends to experiment."

"I never said anything of the like," the girl in question huffs, rolling her eyes at the other two.

"You were thinking it," Daphne retorts.

"What, exactly, are you talking about?"

"Daphne thinks I want to mix magic and technology."

Hermione frowns at this. "I know that, for Hogwarts, the centuries of magic has made it difficult to bring it up to date."

"That's the known theory," Meissa remarks before she gets two simultaneous looks. "I don't intend to do experiments!" she defends. She has no intention to do anything of the like until she has a better understanding of technology.

Not that she'd admit that to Hermione or Daphne.

"In any case," Daphne decides to take it easy on the raven haired girl and change the topic for the time being, "we were discussing about using magic here."

"More like, we agreed we shouldn't."

Hermione shake her head as she hands one end of fitted sheet to Meissa and tugs her end over her side of the mattress. Taking her cue from the Gryffindor girl, Meissa does the same thing.

"I suppose I should say thank you," Hermione remarks drily.

"You've been spending too much time with Meissa," Daphne notes before she starts to unpack her clothes from her trunk.

"Maybe she's been spending too much time with me."

The Slytherins exchange looks before they started laughing, prompting Hermione to glare and throw the pillows she brought at them. Meissa catches the pillow with a laugh, slightly surprised before she retaliates with a fierce war cry.

Downstairs Jane looks up from her cooking as the shouts and laughter echoes through the old house. "My," Henry drawls as he enters the kitchen, shutting the medical book he was studying, "it's been quite some time since I've heard such laughter."

"Longer still since Hermione has brought over friends."

"Oi!" they heard from upstairs before there's a heavy thud.

"Do you want to check on the girls?" Jane suggests to her husband, turning back to the simple meal she had planned.

Henry leaves the room without replying, heading up the stairs to the peals of laughter before he hears his daughter's stern voice lecturing. He follows her voice to the room in the far corner of the house.

"Honestly Meissa!" he hears Hermione scolds before there's another round of laughter, interrupting his daughter. Amused as well as curious he knocks on the partially open door.

"It's open!"

He gently pushes the door open and takes a second to study the scene.

Pillows and blankets cover the hardwood floor. The raven haired girl - Meissa, if he remembers right - is kneeling on the wall bed, a triumph grin on her face as she clutches a pillow in her hands. On the floor, sprawled on her back, was his daughter and she looks rather put out - he imagines she may have been the source of the thump he heard earlier. In the corner of the room was the blonde, slightly disheveled but not nearly as bad as the other two, and she clutches a pillow to her chest as she eyes the other occupants in the room.

"I come bearing news," he announces with a grin on his face, "to the victor, goes the spoils of chocolate cake."

"What!" Hermione cries while Meissa cheers and, with a bounce, got to her feet. He realizes then that Meissa's hair - previously bound in a braid - fell around her shoulders in a rather uncontrolled mess. It reminds him a great deal of Hermione's defiant hair.

"I told you that Slytherins are the best," Meissa teases, helping the brunette to her feet.

"And when did you say this?"

"I've always said it!"

"It's implied," Daphne injects with a sly smirk.

Shaking his head in amusement he leaves the girls to their 'debate', "Supper will be ready in twenty minutes. Wash up before you head down."

"Okay dad!"


	15. Robin Hood

Chapter 15 - Robin Hood

July 4th, 1992  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

Meissa peers at the bookshelves of - she thinks Hermione called them movies - as she debates what to watch. A fair amount of them were colorful with titles like _101 Dalmatians_ and _Robin Hood_. She spies a title - _The Godfather_ \- and is curious about that one, pulling it from the shelf as she creates a stack. So far, she has _The Godfather,_ a film with a few cats covering the case - it looks rather cute, a film with an elegant woman holding up an umbrella, a film with two dogs - why is it so easy to identify that one is a female and the other is a male, a film with what looks like mice dressed in clothes and the Clock tower known as Big Ben, and a film with a woman and a man in mid dance with more mice in clothes - there seems to be a carriage in the background. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Non-magicals really like films with animals from the look of it.

"You've picked a lot," Daphne observes, joining the other girl with a selection she made at a different shelf. The film Daphne picked has a young girl in a purple robe like dress riding on a broom. Hanging from the handle of the broom is a black cat and there's a young boy riding something with two wheels and a giant propellers in front of him. (9)

"Is that one about a witch?" Meissa asks, a bit surprised and amused by this.

Curious she plucks the film from her friend's hands and looks at the back.

'It is tradition for all young witches to leave their families on the night of a full moon to learn their craft. That night comes for Kiki, who follows her dream and embarks on the experience of a lifetime. With her chatty black cat Jiji, she flies off to find a perfect spot in a faraway city. There, a bakery owner befriends Kiki and helps her start her own business: a high-flying delivery service. The job opens up a world of fun-filled escapades and new friendships, including one with Tombo, a boy who dreams one day of flying. As Kiki tries to fit in, she discovers that the confidence she needs to overcome the challenges of growing up is within herself and not in her magic.'

"I thought non-magicals don't like magic," Daphne comments, getting a curious sound from the raven haired girl as she adds it to the pile of films to watch.

"I suppose non-magicals and magicals are not so different after all."

Daphne glances at the other girl at the comment but refrains from saying anything, instead choosing to see what movies her she has picked.

"Popcorn!" Hermione announces gleefully, entering the living room with a flourish as she holds two large bowls up. "What movies have you picked for us to watch?" she peers at the spread of movies laid out on the coffee table. " _The Godfather_? I don't know if my parents will let us watch that - I still haven't seen it."

"Who wants water?" they hear Jean call out from the kitchen.

"I can put it back on the shelf," Meissa remarks, picking up the case to do just that.

"We can ask them first," Hermione interjects, grabbing the movie from the raven haired girl's hands. "Come on, we should help my mum with the glasses."

The Slytherins exchange glances with each other before wordlessly leaving the room to join the Gryffindor girl in the kitchen.

"Where's Mr. Granger?" Meissa asks - she hasn't seen him since they've finished eating supper. The trio have been downstairs in the past hour - alternating between discussing what they'd do for the rest of the night and, in the last fifteen minutes, deciding on movies. Jean had offered to make the Granger's special so long they promised to make sure they brush their teeth before bed.

An easy enough promise for the girls.

"He's upstairs, he wanted to go over some notes from a procedure we're doing later on this week," Jean explains as she hands out tall glasses of water to the girls.

"A procedure? What kind?"

"Has Hermione ever told you what we do?"

Daphne makes a noise that indicates she's unsure.

"I think she said that you're dentists?"

"That's the simplest version of our job," Jean remarks as she ushers the curious girls out of the kitchen, pausing long enough to get them blankets. "Henry is an endodontist specialist - he focuses primarily with issues regarding the nerves of the teeth."

"Teeth have nerves?" Meissa isn't entirely sure what nerves are. She's not even going to try and figure out what exactly is a 'endodontist'. She'll have to pester Hermione about these words at some point.

"Just about every part of your body has nerves," Jean answers blithely. Hermione whispers quickly, as her mum was double checking to make sure that they're all set for a night out in the living room, exactly what nerves are and how much it impacts day to day living.

"Do you have the same job as Mr. Granger?" Daphne asks out of curiosity, arranging the drinks and bowls so that they could reach them from the comforts of the couch.

"Not quite. I'm more of a general dentist except I specialize with children."

Meissa nods distractedly, arranging the items out on the table as she listens. "It doesn't make much sense to me," she finally admits once Jean has left the room.

"Which?"

"Dentists."

Daphne pauses at this, the quilt tumbling open in her hands. "She does have a point," the blonde agrees.

"How so?"

"I think, for me, it's how the mundanes," she glances at Meissa to double check this before continuing, "developed ways to improve daily life."

"Without magic," Hermione adds, arching an eyebrow at the pair.

"Basically yes," the raven haired girl dips her head in acknowledgement. "It's impressive. You have electricity and we have magic. Both societies are… distinctively different and… I think it's safe to say the mundanes have us beat."

"Wait, what?"

Daphne couldn't believe her ears.

Meissa rolls her eyes at her fellow Slytherin's surprise. "Think about it," she twists around to face both girls, "when was the last time anyone in the magical community actually developed something that advanced or improved life?"

The blonde couldn't come up with a rebuttal to that.

"You think the magical community is stagnant?" Hermione asks, looking at Meissa in confusion.

The raven haired girl draws her legs up to her chest, frowning thoughtfully. "I believe it," she remarks idly while Hermione gets thing started up, selecting a movie at random from the pile.

"Please tell me you don't intend to push things forward," Daphne drawls lazily, settling herself close to Meissa without actually touching her.

"I'm only one person," she retorts with an eyeroll, reaching for the bowl of popcorn and settling it on their lap. "I can't do everything," she takes a small handful of the popcorn and samples a little. The combination of the butter and salt makes her hum softly, finding it easy to like this.

"Well at least you admit to your limitations," Hermione remarks as she settles down on the other side of Meissa, reaching for a handful of popcorn as the movie plays.

She shifts the bowl over so that it's situated between the three of them - all but ignoring the fact that she's been sandwiched into place by them. The music catches her attention and every time Daphne makes a sound or seems like she's going to say something Meissa shushes her.

She smiles in amusement as the rooster sings and plays his little guitar, walking his walk and singing his song. She especially likes the fox in his green tunic and bow. The best in Nottingham. With his friend, a large bear whose name is 'Little' - she likes him the most.

~MJB~

Sometime after midnight, in the dead of the night, Henry wonders down the stairs in search of a glass, pausing when he notices a soft glow coming from the living room. Curious he goes to check it out, noticing the soft sounds of snores as he moves closer. The first thing he notices, once he enters the living room, is that the telly is still on. The telly reminds him of the fact that the kids were intending to spend the night watching a few films.

The only source of light is the telly so he gingerly makes his way over to the couch to double check his suspicions. The volume has been set low - it's a good thing or else the sound would have been deafening - and accompanies the snows signaling the end of the tape. In the light he can just barely make out the fact that the girls' are asleep. The couch is large enough for three people to sit comfortably and, as he peers over the top, the girls are making great use of it.

Hermione is sprawled out against one of the arm of the couch, her head propped up by a pillow for maximum comfort. For once, he notes with amusement, she's not the source of the snoring. Her hair has been tied up in a loose ponytail, strands falling onto her face. She has an arm thrown up and one curled comfortably around a leg. He follows that leg to its' owner - the dark haired girl, Meissa. Aside from the one leg on Hermione's lap, the other leg seems to have found its way to the floor, giving her a sprawled relaxed appearance.

One of Meissa's arms has dropped to the side, making it seem like she is slowly but surely falling off the couch. The other arm seems to be held captive by the blonde - Daphne, if he remember rights - and he wouldn't be surprised if this would probably be the only reason why Meissa doesn't completely slide off the couch.

The dark haired girl also seems to be the source of the snores he has been hearing - her mouth partially opened. Each time she exhales there's a soft snore accompanying it He supposes that the way she's laying is probably contributing to the snores. He has often found that Hermione will snore if she sleeps in a certain position - which is usually half reclined or slumped over a desk.

He then notes that Meissa seems to have her head and some of her upper body on Daphne's lap. As he has noticed before, the blonde seems to have Meissa's arm in a loose grip - their joined hands resting on top of Meissa's stomach. From the short time he has had to observe the girls, he has to say that Daphne is possibly the most refined stoic of the pair.

That's not to say that Meissa doesn't have her moments of being refined or stoic.

In any case he notes that Daphne's body seems to be curled around Meissa's or rather, attempting to. It's endearing to see the bond between the pair.

Slightly amused that the girls have passed out watching - he peers at the telly for an idea of what they could've been watching - he tries to cover them somewhat with a blanket. Their positions actually make it difficult to use just the one blanket. Covering Meissa's body effectively covers Hermione's. But it means that Daphne only has Meissa's body to provide her warmth. He'd have to move Meissa in order to get a blanket on the blonde which doesn't really leave him with a lot of options.

With a huff he gives it up as a lost cause and turns off the telly. He then turns on a small lamp which provides enough light should the girls wake up any time soon. Once satisfied that the girls should be okay for the night he returns to his original task - getting a glass of water for himself.

Once he gets that glass he checks in once more with the girls, smiling slightly to himself at the fact that his daughter has _friends_.

He has heard so much about Meissa - the multiple conversations Hermione has had with the other girl - and sincerely hopes that their friendship will survive every test they face.

Notes:

101 Dalmatians - 1961 American animated adventure film

Robin Hood - 1973 American animated musical comedy-adventure film

The Godfather - 1972 American crime film, spanning 1945 to 1955.

The Aristocats - 1970 American animated romantic adventure musical comedy film

Mary Poppins - 1964 American musical-fantasy film

Lady and the Tramp - 1955 American animated musical romance film

The Great Mouse Detective - 1986 American animated mystery comedy film

Cinderella - 1950 American animated musical fantasy film

Kiki's Delivery Service - 1989 Japanese animated coming-of-age fantasy film


	16. Plots and Superiority

Chapter 16 - Plots and Superiority

July 5th, 1992 (Sunday)  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

Meissa peers at the tree marking the boundary of the Granger's property. By her calculations this is the North most portion of the plot. With a thoughtful hum she pulls out the notebook - a small palm sized little notebook - and scribbles down a few ideas with the pencil Hermione gave her.

Pencils - much more user friendly compared to the quills. There's not a chance she'll be giving up this little invention without a fight. The only complaint she has about the pencils is the fact that the lead residue leaves a mark along the side of her hand.

With a soft hum she takes another look at her notes. So far she has a general layout for what she's planning, she just needs to pinpoint the South most portion of the property and the center.

"Meissa," she hears Daphne call out to her before something is thrown at her. Taken by surprised the cloth hits her - covering her face and startling her for a quick second. "Hermione says to get ready."

She yanks the cloth off her head - it's a jacket she notes distantly - so she can glare at the blonde. "Was that necessary?" she retorts, attempting to smooth down her hair.

"Yes," Daphne smiles at the weak glare Meissa sent her. The blonde's rather amused by Meissa's reaction to the jacket suddenly covering her - Meissa's attempt to glare at her is rather weak compared to the usual glares she sends to those who irritate her.

The raven-haired girl brush her hair from her face, smoothing down the wayward strands, before shrugging on the trench coat. It's a knee length jacket with a layer of protection stitched into the inside of the jacket - curtsey of her godmother - and way too many pockets lining the inside. It's made out of a light material just enough to be comfortable in the summer but warm enough for London's winter. It'll do the trick for the most part and frankly, even if it doesn't, she can use a spell to warm herself if needed.

"I don't suppose you know where we're headed?" Meissa asks sarcastically, adjusting the lapels on her jacket as she spoke.

"None. She only said it'll be a surprise."

Meissa huffs softly at this bit of news, already partially irritated but willing to go along for the time being. "Are we meeting the others in the foyer?" she asks, slipping the notebook into the inside pocket of her jacket.

"Yup. Just waiting on you."

"Lovely," Meissa rolls her eyes, slipping a hand into Daphne's as they head over to the house.

"So what were you doing?" Daphne asks.

"Plotting."

"I gathered as much," the blonde remarks drily. "Mind including me?"

She makes a show of thinking about it until the blond bumps her shoulder into her. She grins mischievously at her friend in response.

"What do you think of the nexus?" Meissa deflects casually, getting a side eye from the blonde. The dark haired girl has no doubt she'll have to resume that line of conversation later on but since Daphne isn't calling her out on it she assumes the blonde is going to entertain her for the moment.

"Mm… it's old," Daphne remarks, briefly letting go of the other girl's hand to open the back door. Meissa nods in agreement. "Seems like there's two lines running through it."

"Feels like three."

Daphne pauses in mid motion, her brows furrowing in thought. Reaching out with her magic to try and get a sense of this. She can feel the two she mentioned previously. A large line that runs from the north to the south. Another seems to run to the west. It's slightly smaller than the first one but still easily to notice. It takes her focusing a bit more to get a sense of the third line hidden by first two lines. It's smaller - barely noticeable in the grand scheme of things. It feels new compared to the previous ones.

How was it that Meissa could sense something like this within a day?

Sometime, Meissa's sensitivity to magic is amazing. She's not entirely sure what to make of her friend's sensitivity though.

"Three's a magical number, isn't it?"

"Seven is probably stronger," Meissa remarks idly reaching out and shutting the door completely.

"True."

They were about to continue when they hear footsteps - fast moving - just before they see Hermione turning around the corner.

"There you are!" she exclaims, all but throwing herself at the pair.

Daphne manages to duck back in time which leaves Meissa with the task of catching the smaller girl before she could be knocked off her feet. With a grunt, the girls collide and Meissa teeters on her feet - not quite stable on her feet but not quite falling. Only Daphne's hands on her shoulders keep them from crumbling onto the floor.

"Songbird!" they hear Henry call out, "Did you find your friends?"

In that instance Hermione lets go of Meissa. "Yes dad! We'll be there in a second!" she calls back. "Are you ready?" she asks, looking over the Slytherins.

The raven haired girl is clad in one of her casual cargo pants and a black tank top with the jacket thrown over it. The loose - read that several times larger - top has a phrase on it in bold writing - 'sassy since birth' - in silver print. The best part about the top is that there's an imprint of a kiss - done in a vibrant red with just the right amount of glitter to make it noticeable - that is partially hidden by 'sassy'. Her godfather had basically given her the stink eye for wanting to get it but ultimately did not make a fuss about the purchase.

Daphne is wearing another sundress, a dark blue dress with a floral pattern, that stops just past her knees. When she had been making the selection that morning, Meissa had noticed that it's a sleeveless dress with a high back. For a bit of warmth, Daphne has a black half jacket that doesn't fall further than her ribs. She has her hair tied back in a loose yet somehow elegant bun. Wisps of her hair has already escaped the confines of the hairstyle.

If Meissa hadn't known better, it would be easy to assume that the bun had been done in matter of seconds. For herself, she had not bothered doing anything with her hair after the shower. Electing to allow it to hang free after confining it to a braid for a day. She has no doubt that at some point she will feel compelled to braid it back but for now there's no harm in letting it free.

"As ready as we'll get," Meissa remarks, stuffing her hands into her pockets.

The straps of her wand holster digs slightly into her skin and a brief scrape of her thumb against her fingers confirms she has all her rings on. She doesn't have to touch her ears to know that her earrings are in - she had forgotten to remove them before settling in for the night. Then again, no one was expecting to pass out in front of the telly. In one of her pockets is a vial, charmed to be unbreakable, of her migraine potion. Just in case.

"Great, let's go then!" Hermione declares cheerfully before dashing for the foyer.

"Has she always been this energetic?" Daphne wonders idly as they follow after the Gryffindor at a sedate pace.

"I can't quite recall," Meissa remarks, a smirk tugging on the corners of her lips. "It's cute."

"Mm, that's fair," the blonde agrees in a tone that suggests disbelief at her own words.

"By the way, do you have your wand?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

Meissa shrugs as they stepped into the foyer. "I just wanted to check." She looks at Hermione. "How about you?"

"No?" Hermione had only been paying partial attention to their conversation and just barely registered the question Meissa had directed to the blond.

Both Slytherins stared at the Gryffindor in disbelief.

"Why?" Daphne is the first to ask what was on their minds.

"Because it's against the law?"

"It is not against the law to carry a wand," Meissa points out.

"I only meant that it's against the law to use magic while underage and outside of Hogwarts."

"And how do you plan on defending yourself if necessary?"

"Why, pray tell, do you think you may need to defend yourself?" Jane injects gently.

"My uncle knows of a wizard who has a saying," Meissa starts evenly, her hands stuffed into her pockets in an effort to keep from crossing her arms. "Constant vigilance." Daphne nods her head in agreement.

"But we could get expelled!" Hermione protests.

"There are loop holes," Daphne informs the brunette. "In event of emergencies, we are allowed to defend ourselves. Obviously being discreet is important but in the grand scheme of things, staying alive is top priority." Meissa can agree with this but she's also aware that the law benefits only the purebloods.

"Considering that magical children are a rarity they will pardon us for using magic in emergencies," Meissa adds in a dry tone.

"A rarity?" Henry asks in disbelief. "Somehow I didn't get that impression from the train station."

The girls exchange a look with each other, debating on saying anything before Daphne sighed and gestures for Meissa to continue.

"Perhaps rarity is not the correct wording," Meissa remarks lightly as she gestures for the Grangers to head out the front door. The Slytherins joining the trio to allow for Jane to lock the door behind them. "How much are you aware of the history of the Magical world?"

"Only bits and pieces," Henry supplies while his wife unlocks the car for them. "Basically what Songbird has told us about."

Meissa nods thoughtfully, waiting until everyone is situated in the car before continuing. Daphne and her were able to buckle themselves in with minimal help from the Gryffindor. Considering that they've only been in the car once so far they're fast learners.

"It's to my understanding that the numbers for non-magicals are among several billions. The magical world is… a small portion of the entire world. In Britain, alone, after the recent wars the population is probably as low as it ever been."

"What she means," Daphne injects with a fond eyeroll, "our birthrates are extremely low."

"The pureblood insists on being only with purebloods," Meissa adds.

"The old bloods anyway. There are some families who doesn't care about blood status."

Daphne exchange looks with the raven haired girl, the girls silently debating on how much the elder Grangers know. Meissa doesn't recall ever discussing the tiers within the magical world. The muggleborns are considered the lowest among the witches and wizards, just barely a step up above the Squibs. How much did they want to inform the Grangers when it's clear that Hermione had limited how much she has told them about what had happened at the end of their First year.

"Wait," Henry twists around to look at the girls, "does that mean these… 'purebloods' - do they practice selective breeding?"

"Indeed," Meissa remarks in a bland tone.

The grimace on Henry's face was hilarious - if it wasn't for the fact she's deeply aware of how tangled her own bloodline is. How many families she is connected to through marriage and blood. Her own aunt and uncle were first cousins.

~MJB~

Hi everyone, I want to say thank you for the reviews, favs, and follows. I hope you continue to like the story and the (mis)adventures of the group.

If you have any thoughts/suggestions as to what the girls can do during the summer please leave a comment. Other than that, have a great day/night and I'll see you for the next chapter.


	17. Time at ZSL

Happy belated holiday!

 _ **IMPORTANT NOTE AT THE BOTTOM!**_

Chapter 17 - Time at ZSL

July 5th, 1992 (Sunday)  
Location: ZSL London Zoo (Zoological Society of London)

Meissa peers through the glass with a giddy childish grin, humming softly as she studies the many colorful fishes swimming through the tank. She's particularly fond of the tiger shark she sees every once awhile.

It doesn't even look remotely close to the tigers she saw earlier.

Daphne has a grasp on her hand - Meissa had ran off one too many times in everyone's opinion - but it's in a loose hold. Just enough to make sure she doesn't get separated from the group yet loose to keep her from freaking out from the prolonged contact.

Yet, of the two of them, Meissa has the tightest grasp.

" _Can we have a pet shark?"_ the raven haired girl whispers, tracking the shark with her eyes.

"No," Daphne shakes her head, pondering, for the upmost time, the childish lilt in her friend's voice.

It's been present almost since their arrival at the zoo and it's a stark reminder of the day they left Hogwarts. Unlike that day, however, Meissa seems to know who Hermione and Daphne are. There was an indication that she did not recognize Henry and Jane but the second Hermione acknowledged her parents as such the tension in the raven haired girl all but evaporated.

" _Aw,"_ the other girl pouts but doesn't protest too much as Daphne encourages her into moving on.

She gets captivated easily by the sea dragons at the next tank. Daphne has to admit defeat and simply stands back to keep an eye on her best friend. She makes a game to distract the other girl - how many sea dragons she can find by one strand of kelp.

While Meissa is counting the sea dragons Hermione joins them, burdened with drinks and soft pretzels for the trio. Her dad had gone with her to get the snacks and, upon returning, went to join Jane at a seat while they waited for the girls to finish enjoying the aquarium.

"Sea dragons," Hermione observes, noting that Meissa is completely captivated by the countless little sea dragons floating around their kelps.

She hands out a pretzel to Daphne as they keep an eye on Meissa. The other girl had elected to go from one tank to another, exclaiming excitedly at the various aquatic animals available for viewing.

Daphne's not entirely sure when they let go of each other's hands.

"What do you think so far?" Hermione asks lightly, passing over the large cup.

"It's amazing. But she's having more fun than us," Daphne remarks with an amused grin.

"What are you interested in then?"

"Mm, there's the theater. Every year the theater puts on the story of Merlin."

"He's from the story of King Arthur, right?"

" _Daphne!"_ they hear just before the other girl bounds back towards them, throwing her arms around the other girl. _"Can we go see more fishes?"_

"How about we go see the reptiles? We've been in the aquarium for almost thirty minutes," the blond suggests.

" _Oh! A snake!"_

Not for the first time, Daphne wonders about this side of her friend.

~MJB~

A low groan escapes Meissa's throat as she comes around - a slight pounding in the back of her head as she tries to take stock of herself and her surroundings.

She's in the car.

Daphne's head is resting on her shoulder.

The sun is setting.

Wait.

"What?" she mutters, leaning forward as she looks around.

There's music playing.

Henry is driving - wasn't Jane the one driving earlier?

"Meissa? Are you okay?"

She looks at the Gryffindor to find her lowering a book, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

She sees a colorful bag on the floor of the car - it has an image of an animal decorating the surface of it and she can see the tip of a cap poking out of the bag.

They've gone somewhere.

Except… she couldn't remember anything.

"I… where did we go?"

Jane turns to look at her.

"We just left the zoo, sweetie," Jane answers, her voice dropping a pitch. "You haven't been sleeping for long."

"A zoo?" Meissa mutters, racking her mind for anything. She turns and shakes Daphne as the edge of panic starts to grip her while Hermione peers at her.

She couldn't remember anything beyond the conversation about the pureblood's selectiveness. That had been several hours before midday. Now it's getting close to twilight.

"Meissa… is this like what happened with Pansy?" Hermione asks as Daphne rubs her eyes, slow to waking. Hermione didn't ask if it's like that time before the train left. Their previous conversations had indicated that Meissa had noticed nothing amiss in between packing for the trip home to arriving at the platform.

"Hey…" Daphne mutters, tangling her fingers with Meissa's. Ensnaring the panicking girl's attention and causing her to calm just a little. "Breathe," she whispers even further. Meissa shudders before lowering her head onto Daphne's shoulder, allowing the blond to run her fingers through her hair.

"What did I hear about Pansy?" Daphne asks after the shakes in Meissa's shoulders has ebbed away.

Hermione frowns as she glances at her mother. She was still keeping an eye on them but for the most part she has turned to face the road again. Still, it doesn't mean that this will be a private conversation.

"She doesn't remember the zoo," Hermione whispers.

"That explains a few things."

This has Meissa pulling away from Daphne in confusion. "What?" She grips the blonde's hand tightly as she searches her eyes. "How was I -?"

"Shh… in a bit, okay?" Daphne mutters before the other girl could work herself into a frenzy.

With an irritated scowl Meissa glances over the interior of the car, registering the interested gaze of the elder Grangers. Wordlessly she nods to accept the pause in the conversation grounding herself and shoving the anxieties and frustrations aside into the pools. Instead she decides to ask them about their day.

After five minutes she starts to turn red from the secondhand embarrassment.

Although, she wished she has memories of seeing the sharks - they sound awesome.

~MJB~

The second they got back to the house they disappeared into the attic before Jane or Henry could call them back. The attic is an entirely large space lined with shelves which, in turn, is burdened with books. Big and small, thick and thin - just about every imaginable book a person could conceive of is on these shelves. Despite the setting sun it's clear that the library has plenty of natural lights with lamps here and there for a little bit of night reading. It's easy to imagine that Hermione would pull an all-nighter, curled up with a book in her lap.

It's a book nerd ideal world.

It suits Hermione perfectly.

In one corner of the attic they find comfortable seats near the large bay windows. There, Daphne and Hermione settled on the window seats while Meissa paces back and forth.

"Tell me everything," Meissa growls, her hair twisting beneath her hands.

"Meissa… how long have you been getting black outs?" Hermione asks instead.

"I don't know. Since… I was eight?"

"How often."

She makes a frustrated noise as she threw up her hands. "I don't know!"

"Meissa." Daphne goes to her, bracing her hands on the other girl's shoulders.

The taller girl lets a frustrated noise escape her before she forces herself to, once again, shove all of that into a pool.

"I don't know," she repeats softly. "Sometimes… hours pass. Or I'm in another room… Sometimes, the room I was in is trashed - that one happened a lot after I turned nine." She pulls away from the blonde with a shudder, crossing her arms defensively. "I was… always angry. I still am," she mutters the last bit to herself, stubbornly ignoring the itch on her shoulder as she tries to forget.

Tries to keep from thinking about that time.

"Do you ever remember trashing the rooms?" Hermione's voice is soft and gentle. The voice of someone who doesn't want to provoke a beast.

"Sometimes." She looks out a window, at the darkening skies. "Only some of it. I once broke a few things and… I guess I exhausted myself at some point 'cause everything was broken when I came to. Aunt Cissy looked so worried…

"Why does this matter," she turns to Hermione as she shakes away the memory of one of her worse rampages.

Screams. Crying. Magic flying everywhere. Narcissa's stern voice cutting through it all.

Then nothing.

"You weren't yourself," Daphne answers softly, "at the zoo I mean. It was like… all the worries you ever had in your life was gone."

"I find that hard to believe."

"It's true," Hermione injects. "In the entire year I've known you, not once have I ever seen you so carefree."

"I can be carefree!"

"Not like that. You didn't make one snide comment, one sarcastic remark about the sounds -," Hermione pauses as something came to her. "Wait… you didn't have a migraine."

"What?"

Daphne looks at Hermione, just as confused as Meissa, as the Gryffindor presses a hand to her forehead. "What are you going on about?"

"Think about it - Meissa should've had a sensory overload from all the smells, the sounds," Hermione gestured before she grimaces. The zoo was the worse place they could've taken the Slytherin to with her tendency for migraines, "Why didn't I think of that before we went?"

Meissa grimaces as she gets the impression that she probably should avoid the place in the future. It sounds an awful lot like the magical menagerie. She can still remember the migraine she had gotten while at the menagerie just before her aunt had given her the potion for the migraine. But it does beg the question - why did she not develop one of her usual headaches.

"Meissa…" Daphne frowns as she looks at the stunned raven-haired girl, "Hermione has a point."

She nods her head in silent agreement, crossing her arms as she considers this. She has had migraines for as long as she could remember - too much sounds, stress, extreme anger, all were the usual triggers for her migraines.

The fact that the zoo hadn't triggered one is nerve wrecking.

Hi again.

I want to apologize for the long period without updates. Around the time of the previous update (October 19 ish ) I caught wind of a hack that was going around on ffn. I'm still unsure if it's still happening or if things are better now. So, the most part I have been updating on Ao3 (Archive of our Own) but I didn't want any of ya'll to think I've abandoned the story here.

That's nowhere near the truth.

So, I'll be for sure posting on Ao3 and keeping an eye on how things progress on ffn. If any of ya'll know anything about the hack (profile/account hack) lemme know. If you have an account on Ao3 you can follow the series there (same titles for the stories) and find me under the name of Xandiki. If you don't have an account, I think it's fairly simple to start a new one - there is a minor waiting period but I think it's worth it imo.

As usual, don't forget to leave a review! Have a great day/night.


	18. Don't Panic

Chapter 18 - Don't Panic

July 5th, 1992 (Sunday)  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

"So what was different about the trip to ZSL?" Meissa asks lowly, her hands working on taming back her hair.

"Your behavior," Daphne states flatly before she reaches over and helps the other girl with the braids. Instead of choosing to gather Meissa's hair into a single braid she decides to split her hair into smaller, manageable braids that essentially combines into a larger one. A part of her is surprised that Meissa is actually allowing her to do this.

"The… child," Meissa mutters, glancing at the blonde as she continues to braid her hair.

A part of her still couldn't believe she had been acting so… unlike herself. She wants to utterly reject this - deny that it's ever a thing.

But then she remembers. The odd random things she would wake up to. Toys - long since packed away - spread out before her in some elaborate scene. Pillows stacked and covered by blankets. Well read, dog eared, children's books left open on a random page.

She can't deny something that is inherently true.

"Not so much a child," Hermione remarks idly, leaving her seat to pull free a book from a shelf.

It's unclear if it's a book that relates back to their conversation.

She hopes so.

"How _else_ would you describe this."

Hermione gives the irritated Slytherin a reproachful look for the tone. With an indignant huff the girl returns to her seat with the book in hand, "I don't always have an answer, you know."

The pair exchange heated glares at each other until Daphne intervenes with a soft sigh.

"She's only trying to help," she murmurs, tapping her friend's head in a light reprimand, "Go easy on her ok?"

Meissa mutters darkly but, without further prompting, makes a small apologetic noise.

Hermione didn't press for something more concrete - she's familiar with this particular tick in the dark haired girl's. It'd take a lot to convince the other girl of being wrong about something - even more to even admit and then offer an apology.

After a long moment Meissa lets a long exhale escape her, her shoulders dropping slightly as Daphne continues to braid her hair. Already half of her long hair has been braided back.

"What do we do now?" she asks softly.

"Plan?" Hermione suggests.

"For what?" Daphne asks as she starts another small braid.

Hermione makes a sound that indicates she is unsure. Meissa doesn't really have a response since she's still unnerved by the gaps in her memories - a part of her wondering why she never sought an answer sooner.

"… I need to adjust the plans for the week," Hermione announces after a long moment of silence, turning a page in her book. She has an irritated expression on her face - a person doesn't have to be a genius to realize that she's bothered by the fact that she forgot to account for Meissa's tendency for migraines.

"We don't know all of my triggers," Meissa points out.

"Well, we do know about the migraines."

"You can't just bundle me up."

"None of us is suggesting that."

"You might not be."

Meissa jabs an elbow back at the blond for that remark. The slight tug of her hair was the only reprimand she got for that. That and a giggle for the reaction.

"I don't need to be babied."

Her voice was not at all petulant.

Nope.

An arm slides over her shoulder before a head rests on her shoulder. A side eye confirms that it's Daphne and - she can't keep a goofy smile off her face - the blond looks content. An easy smile is on the other girl's face, her pale blue eyes shining in the low light of the attic, strands of pale blond hair slightly obscuring her face.

It's hard to try and be angry at her.

"At the very least we can make sure that we avoid things that could trigger an…" Hermione pauses as she tries to think of the right word.

"Episode."

"That's as good as we'll probably get," Daphne remarks as she drapes the finished braid over a shoulder, starting on yet another.

Hermione rolls her eyes at them before she gets out a notebook and scribbles a few things down.

"So we know that the triggers are… sensory overloads," the Gryffindor remarks as she writes, "Extreme cases of anger." Hermione glances up at the other girls at this. A puzzled expression fliting across her face as she narrows her eyes just a bit. "Why does extreme anger trigger a black out?"

She only gets a shrug from the raven-haired girl.

"Not really helpful," she remarks idly but went back to writing down notes about what she knows.

"Sorry."

Hermione rolls her eyes at her friends but went back to writing her notes.

Daphne continued to braid the long unruly raven hair.

None of them noticed the door to the attic softly closing.

~MJB~

In the guestroom, Meissa has made herself comfortable on the corner of the bed, hunch over her notes. The tip of her pen scratching out numbers as she calculates the distance, the sizes, the amounts - just about everything she would need to know.

With a grumble she scratches at her left shoulder, almost twisting around to get to the scarring there. The itch there has been driving her insane for the last few hours - since the issue of her blackouts came to light. To most people it seems like she's scratching at nothing. But beneath all the glamours on her, is a white patterned scar that has been a source of irritation for nearly four years now. Time still hasn't taken away the worse of the scarring - it may never fade away and it's something she loathes with every fiber of her being.

"Hey," she hears before she becomes too absorbed with her memories.

A slight shudder escapes her before she bundles the emotions and the thoughts into a ball and drops them away into a pool.

She'll have to clear them out at some point.

But that point is not now. She's not sure when that point will ever come.

Without looking she knows it's Daphne - returning from the loo most likely - so she doesn't flinch at the sudden contact on her shoulder. Right at the spot she was trying to scratch, the blonde's nails digging slightly into her skin.

"Itchy?" the blond asks as she settles down on the couch, lightly scratching at the spot. Getting a mixed reaction from the raven-haired girl.

"Yeah," she mutters, shifting slightly so that the other girl wasn't right on top of the scarring. Now that the immediate itch was settled she could concentrate on her notes. On one of the pages she has an array that is meant for the nexus in the house - she needs to figure out where the bloody hell that is. On another page is the array for the northern portion of the property.

"What are you working on?" she hears Daphne ask just before she feels the weight of the blonde's head settling onto her shoulder.

She tilts the notebook up so Daphne could see.

It's a bare bone sketch of a rune array. The array is basically a circle consisting of small runes in a repeating pattern of protection, shield, ward, and conceal. In the center of the array is the elemental symbol associated with the North - an inverted triangle with a horizontal line through the middle.

There's room for improvement.

"Impressive," Daphne remarks as she studies the sketches. "Do you plan on taking Ancient Runes?" she asks out of curiosity, reaching out a hand to turn the page.

"It's one of my options," she agrees mildly.

"What other classes are you considering?"

"Magical creatures."

Daphne makes a noise of disagreement before sighing. "Okay."

"Also, Arithmancy."

"You and numbers," Daphne mutters fondly, moving away from the raven-haired girl with a huff.

She sticks her tongue out at the blonde before getting up to put away her things. Finding herself grateful that she has already replaced her earrings with the old set - sleeping with an actual feather earring is too cumbersome.

"What about you? What classes are you thinking of?"

"I'll join you for the care of magical creatures… other than that I don't really know."

"Mm… we have another year before we have to sign up for the classes," Meissa yawns, turning off the main lights for Daphne to switch on the nightstand's lamp. With the aid of the lamp's low light, she makes her way to the bed, claiming the side farthest from the door.

The bed's big enough for them to have some space. Crawling under the blankets Meissa pulls the blankets up to her shoulders. A part of her feels she needs to shy away - a large part of her, a growing part, has been slowly becoming uneasy with all the constant contact. Two whole days of nothing but contact and she feels like she has to fight the crawling sensation beneath her skin.

She dreads even poking the pools - of releasing the emotions and sorting through them properly.

Her Uncle Sev would have her head if she doesn't sort through them any time soon.


	19. Letters over Breakfast

Chapter 19 - Letters over Breakfast

July 6th, 1992 (Monday)  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

"Okay, Hermione, you know the practice's numbers," Jean is saying as Meissa and Daphne eats their breakfast - a hearty breakfast of cereal. Henry has already left the house to get the car started so they can leave.

"Yes, mum," Hermione dutifully recites, holding up her mother's things.

Her parents can't afford to take off an entire week from their practice so they're planning on taking a half day. However, the girls would have free reign of the house until mid-afternoon. Jean may be comfortable leaving Hermione by herself for a few hours before but right now, with two girls unfamiliar with the mundane world, she wants to be positive that they'd know how to contact them if needed.

"We should be back in time for supper," Jean affirms, accepting her things.

"Okay," Hermione opens the door for her mother, accepting the quick forehead kiss from her before her whirlwind of a mother is gone through the door. From the kitchen, Meissa and Daphne peers into the foyer as the Gryffindor closes the door behind her mother.

"She's a worrywart," Meissa remarks from her position, keeping a light tone as she says this.

"Yeah," Hermione mutters in agreement, making sure to lock the door. In short time Hermione has rejoined them, pouring herself a bowl of cereal as Daphne passes her the jug of milk. Meissa, in between bites, flips through her notes, scribbling down more thoughts.

After yesterday she has basically eliminated the attic as a possible location for the nexus - which, in hindsight, makes plenty of sense. Sitting in the kitchen she can sense the nexus - the second floor and attic had dulled the nexus to the point of nonexistent - but it's not quite to the point of making her jittery. She has no doubts that if she goes downstairs she'll be so hyper Daphne and Hermione will want to tie her down.

It'd be a reminisce of what happened on Walpurgis night.

While she's sketching out the runes, relying on her memories for the correct shapes, she takes slow bites of her breakfast. Sometimes the spoon nearly misses her mouth. So intent on what she's working on she doesn't really pay much attention on what she's eating.

"Meissa," Daphne sighs as she reaches for the pen, waiting until the other girl is done with her sketching before taking it away.

"Sorry," she smiles apologetically, closing the notebook with the intention of finishing her cereal. Except she didn't get much time to eat when everyone hears a tapping sound from the window.

Startled she turns to the source, blinking when she finds three owls bearing mails. One, she reckons, is meant for herself.

"Expecting mail?" she questions as she gets up, taking her bowl with her. She sidetracks herself to get something to feed to the owls - getting some water as well. She makes a note to get some proper owl treats for next time. She opens the window just as Hermione joins her at the sill.

"It's the _Daily Prophet_ , brilliant!"

"Why are you reading that trash?" Daphne asks in disbelief from where she's sitting.

"Some news is better than none," the Gryffindor defends.

"Government directed news is not really news," Meissa disagrees, laying out the treats and water for the owls as she retrieves the letters and the newspaper for Hermione. She hands out a letter to Daphne, grimacing as she realizes that she has at least ten letters to sort through. She hands a letter to Hermione, noticing that it's from Weasley.

"You're popular today," Daphne remarks as she breaks the seal on her letter.

"Unfortunately," Meissa mutters, sorting through the letters as the owls ate the bread she had torn for them. Her mail, it seems, consist entirely of letters from Gringotts - bank statements she suspects. There are a few letters she has been expecting.

She notes, with interest, that she has a response from the Flamels. Judging by the weight of the envelope she can judge that they've provided her a portkey as well. She sets the letter aside to read a bit later.

The next letter to catch her attention is addressed to her from an Andromeda Tonks.

"Andromeda," she mutters half to herself, trying to remember who on earth this is.

"Who's that?" Hermione asks, looking up from the newspaper.

"That's what I'm trying to remember," she grumbles, half irritated as the name eludes her.

"Isn't that one of your relatives?" Daphne points out, looking up from her letter.

She taps her chin with the letter as she thinks on it. Andromeda sounds like a name the family would use. The only one who doesn't have a name that is remotely close to being related to a star is her Aunt Narcis-

Oh.

"You look like someone who just made a connection."

"She's the sister of my mother," she remarks, opening the letter now.

 _To whom it may concern,  
I thank you for the letter you've sent me several days ago. However I will have to decline your offer. My family and I have done well without the support of the House of Black. _

_Sincerely,  
Andromeda Tonks_

"That's a short letter," she notes idly. She hadn't honestly expected anything more. More than a decade of exile wouldn't do much in endearing the House to her aunt. She's not entirely sure what it would take to convince her to return.

Either way, this sets back her plans just a tad.

"There's something on the back," Daphne points out, prompting the girl to flip the parchment around. She notes, with amusement, that the writing is nearly illegible but the signature at the end confirms that its someone from the Tonks side of the family. Whoever wrote the note only left their surname so she has no hope of figuring out who the heck wrote this.

 _Meissa, cousin, wotcher! Don't listen to mum. I'm free to meet you in Diagon Alley this coming Saturday.  
Tonks_

"Anything good?" Hermione asks curiously.

"I suppose it is," Meissa agrees mildly, folding the parchment before returning it to the envelope. It seems, she thinks on the matter, that her aunt has a child who is willing to meet up with her. The question is, how does she convince the others to go to Diagon Alley? Perhaps the direct route may be best for this.

"Does anyone fancy a trip to the markets on Saturday?"

"Why?"

"Does it have something to do with your letter?" Daphne questions as Meissa picks up another letter - Rowls & Lars is written in a perfect script in the corner. She imagines that it's a response to the letter she sent them.

With her new responsibilities, she has ultimately decided she needs a lawyer on retainer. She is, after all, only twelve years old. On her long list of things to do, she considers locating and contacting the exiled Blacks her primary concern. She will, of course, be including their descendants in her attempt to restore the House. There's not much point of being the Lord of the House when it's just her. The family's habit of banishing the unwanted has created quite the dilemma for herself. She hopes that Rowls & Lars will be able to help her with tracking down the possible family. Along with dealing with any long-standing bank accounts.

"Meissa."

"Huh?" she looks up, blinking at them as she re-engaged with them.

"Why do you want to go to Diagon Alley?"

"Ah, someone from the Tonks family wants to meet with me," Meissa remarks as she breaks the seal on the envelope.

"How do you know them?" Hermione asks, glancing up from her newspaper.

"Andromeda," Meissa states as if that answers the question. As far as she's concern it does explain everything. The look she gets from Hermione - not that she noticed - indicated that wasn't enough.

She glances down at the contents of the letter from Rowls & Lars - it seems that they've given her a contract along with any information she would need about it. With a distracted noise she closes the envelope again for later. The fact that they've provided her with a contract - well, depending on the content, it may benefit the House. The other agencies she had considered was, to be frank, much too willing to try and take advantage of her age - or lack of.

That seems to be it for letters - thankfully.

"Maybe we can ask my parents if we can go," Hermione suggests, folding the newspaper as she looks at them.

Meissa nods idly as she picks up her bowl, finishing up the cereal. It tastes rather bland compared to what she's used to but, for the most part, it's not too bad. It's not something she can see herself having too often.

"What's the plan for today?" Daphne asks, with a scowl on her face as she starts to tear up the letter she has gotten. Steadfastly ignoring the questioning look she's getting from her fellow Slytherin.

"The nexus."

"What?"

The Slytherins glance at each other.

"Do you know what's a Nexus?" Daphne asks softly.

"I haven't read anything about them."

"They're rather ancient," Meissa remarks as she stirs the cereal. There isn't much left floating around in the milk so she doesn't feel compelled to continue eating. She's not entirely sure what to do with the milk. "There isn't a lot of texts that talk about them."

"They're a product of ley lines," Daphne adds. The shreds of the letter has been already thrown away into the waste basket. "Think of rivers and you might actually be close to the idea of what are ley lines."

"Are you sure there isn't any text about them?"

"Well…" Meissa twiddles the pen back and forth as she mentally reviews the Black Library. There's a fair amount of ancient texts that refers to information no longer available to the general public. A portion of the texts in the library have been classified as forbidden arts - the fact she has them can potentially get her heftily fined. It's rather fortunate that the books are locked away under in a room with an extremely powerful blood ward keeping them hidden away. "There is a tome or two in my family's library," she finally admits.

She turns a few pages in her notebook and starts to draw out the lay lines that are running through the nexus under the Granger's house. Once she's done with the rough sketch she turns the notebook around for Hermione to study. "There's two ancient lines. The largest one runs from the north to the south," she points to the one with the thickest lines. "This one runs east to west," she indicates the second which is marginally smaller than the first.

As far as she's aware the larger the lines the older they are.

"There's also a third one," she taps the last one that is probably one eighth the size of the largest. "If I had to make a guess, it's probably only a century old at this point."

"What can you do with a ley line?"

"It depends," Daphne remarks as she gathers the dishes and takes them to the sink. "They're not exactly easy to tap into but they can be a source of power."

"Which is why the tomes about them are hard to find."

"So, it would be possible."

"If you're willing to spend ten of thousands for them," Meissa agrees with a wry grin.

Hermione grimaces at her words while Daphne muffles her giggles.


	20. The Heart

Chapter 20 - The Heart

July 6th, 1992 (Monday)  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

Hermione hands the bowl to Daphne who, with a towel in hand, starts to dry the dish before passing it along to Meissa. As the tallest of the trio, Meissa finds it a bit easier to return the dish to its' shelf in the cabinet. Between the three of them they are able to finish washing and putting away the dishes before it gets too late. Once the task was done they returned to the first floor to dress for the day - having gone downstairs in their night wear.

Meissa's chosen attire for the day is a simple pair of trousers - the faded jeans - and a loose shirt with 'Born This Way' written boldly across the chest. Strapped to her forearm is her holster, her wand safely secured inside. Since the weather seems to be relatively warm she decides to forgo a long sleeve shirt underneath the first.

Daphne, for once since their stay, decides to forgo a dress or a skirt. Instead her outfit consists of a pair of trousers - they seem to be a semi-formal style that her cousin favors - coupled with a simple blouse. It seems like it's made from silk or something a few steps above cotton or even wool. Meissa has the distinct feeling that the blouse would feel soft beneath her touch. The blonde, instead of using an arm holster, simply tucks hers into a holster secured to the belt of her trousers.

Meissa thought it was impractical - Daphne would have to reach around behind her back, grab the wand, and bring it back around to point at whoever she needs to point it at. Whereas her arm holster allows her to simply flick her hand and barely a heartbeat later she has her wand. She makes a note to get Daphne a better holster for Christmas.

She also makes a note to get something for Daphne's birthday ahead of time. She missed her chance last time since Daphne didn't share with her when her birthday was until nearly a week before the date. She scarcely had time to order something for the blonde - a book on advanced Transfiguration - and it felt a little impersonal.

"Ready?" Daphne asks after she stashed away her dirty laundry.

Meissa glances up from her notebook, which has her latest thoughts on the ward scheme she wants to utilize. Each page has a rune circle with notes detailing its' purpose with even more pages expanding on it. Since each circle has to be drawn perfectly on their medium she has pages dedicated to each rune in each circle.

"Yeah. Want to see if 'Mione is?"

Meissa shoves the notebook into her pocket as Daphne nods, following the other girl out of the room.

"Hermione!" she calls out cheerfully, bouncing through the hall to knock on the Gryffindor's door. "Do you want to build a ward?" she sings airily.

The door flies open and she's greeted with an incredulous look from the other girl.

"You are absolutely ridiculous," the brunette announces but, nonetheless, slips on her shoes. Meissa simply gives her a cheeky grin.

"So what are your plans?" Daphne asks, heading down the stairs. Meissa simply grabs her notebook and tosses it to her fellow Slytherin. "Oi!" Daphne glares at the raven haired girl, gripping the notebook.

"Just read it," Meissa stuck her tongue out at her, making her way to the door leading to the cellar.

Hermione pauses to study the notebook alongside with Daphne.

"Meissa, what is this?!"

The only response they got from the other girl was a loud crackle of amusement.

~MJB~

Meissa hums idly to herself, surveying her surroundings. The cellar is neatly organized - lined with shelves that are burdened by boxes clearly labeled. The remaining space is cleared of everything, leaving it open for anyone to use the cellar however they want. Of course, it also makes it a challenge to determine where the best location of the center rune circle.

It must be a permanent fixture, something that cannot be easily removed or changed.

"Meissa," Hermione calls, the stairs creaking slightly as she enters the cellar. "What are these runes for?"

"Ah - it's not in my notes?"

"Honestly," Daphne starts, tossing the slim book to its owner, "I think you're the only one who can understand your own writing."

Meissa fumbles the notebook, scrambling to catch it while giving Daphne a glare for her antics. Neither chose to mention the fact that out of everyone that ever seen Meissa's handwriting, Daphne has the best chance of deciphering it.

"So?" Daphne prompts.

"Mm?" She blinks as she realizes that they're waiting for her to translate her notes. "Oh, right, so…" she opens the notebook to the overall scheme.

"That doesn't look too different from what you showed me before," Hermione remarks before Meissa could say anything, leaning in to get a closer look.

"It is rather similar to that," she agrees. "However, this is both more complicated while at the same time just as simple." She turns the page to show the runes for the center piece. "This would be the one for the house."

Daphne takes another look of the pages. "A rune for privacy," she reads, squinting and tilting her head slightly to the side. "A rune for protection…"

She didn't get far on that list before Meissa snaps the notebook shut. It wasn't exactly easy to even try and make out a sentence so one part of her was annoyed at the fact that Meissa interrupted her.

"So why are we down here?" Hermione asks out of confusion.

"It's where the nexus is strongest," Meissa remarks idly, pacing the space. Judging the strength of the magic as it brushes over her skin.

"And how do you intend to place the runes?"

She pauses in the near center of the cellar. This seems to be the strongest point of the nexus and the exact meeting point of all three lines. There's nothing she can use here to carve the runes into - the ground would be treaded on often and wear out the runes too much.

"Up there," she announces cheerfully, pointing to the ceiling above her head.

She pays them no mind as they share a look among themselves.

"What do you want us to do?"

"Maybe you can determine where the South most portion of the estates is?"

Daphne crosses her arms at the other girl, arching a fine eyebrow at her. "How south do you want us to go?"

"Make sure it's on the property and something that won't get removed easily," she instructs while she searches for a way to easily reach where she intends to place the array.

"Don't do anything reckless," Daphne tells her sternly, leading the way up the stairs. Hermione cast a worried look at the raven haired girl before wordlessly following the blonde.

Once the door to the cellar was shut Meissa flicks her wand into her hand. With a soft murmur she creates a near replica of the array meant for the center of the ward scheme. She then enlarges it to the point of being nearly a foot wide. With the notebook in hand she double checks her notes, making sure that each rune is exactly as it should be.

After a brief moment she concludes that everything is good to go and sends it up to the ceiling. She takes her time to make sure to rotate the array until its aligned to the four corners of the property. Once she's satisfied with that she turns to the north, mentally centering herself as she recalls the design and the incantation. And the one thing she has to always keep in her mind as she recites the words.

Shouldn't be too hard.

"From the North, I beseech thee, grant upon this house protection of the Earth. Shroud this land from unwanted gazes." She traces an inverted triangle before drawing a horizontal line through the center with her wand, leaving an afterimage that lingers. The triangle floats before her and glows as a bright shade of green. She had to resist the urge to breathe in relief, reminding herself that she has three more to do.

She turns to the east.

"From the East, I beseech thee, grant upon this house protection of the Air. Tear all who threatens the people of this land." For a second time she traces a triangle - upright this time - with a horizontal bar through the middle. Unlike the first triangle this one glows a bright shade of yellow - it reminds her faintly of the sun.

She turns to the south.

"From the South, I beseech thee, grant upon this house protection of the Fire. Burn all those who seek to harm the inhabitants of this land." She traces another upright triangle but this time without a horizontal line. It glows fiercely as a bright vivid red that truly reminds her of fire.

One more.

She turns to the west.

"From the West, I beseech thee, grant upon this house protection of the Water. Cleanse this land now and forevermore." She traces an inverted triangle - without the line - and watches as it takes on a bright blue glow.

With the last symbol now drawn the four triangles pulse together in time as she focuses on the heart of the ward.

With every beat of her heart so did the symbols pulse. In her mind she can see the four points of the ward. She still haven't pinpointed where the array for the South point should go but, as she stands there at the heart of the property, surrounded by the nexus, she can envision it.

But the heart of the ward - the one who will be able to control the ward freely - she thinks of her.

Stubborn - she won't be easily convinced to sway from her convictions.

Compassion - she cares too much about others.

Anger - hard to rouse but it burns hotter than the sun once it gets going.

She thinks about all of this before she draws a circle. It glows white before she adds on four more lines. One going vertically. One going horizontally. And two going diagonally. With these four lines a wheel is formed. She takes out her hand and gently 'cups' the new symbol.

"I beseech to thee, Spirit, grant upon this house thy protection," she whispers, her voice dropping from the near chant-like level, "Ward this house from harm."


	21. All work and No Play

Chapter 21 - All Work and No Play

July 6th, 1992 (Monday)  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

After getting the center array all set up, she finds it a little bit easier to relax, her shoulders dropping slightly in relief. Her magic feels like it's dancing beneath her skin as she cradles the last symbol to her chest. In hindsight she realizes that doing this now instead of waiting until Daphne and Hermione has found and marked the last of the four corners. Now she's in a situation where she has to disguise the fact that she can use magic while at the same time set up a ward.

Fun.

She leaves the cellar as she cradles the symbol to her chest, pausing long enough to grab her jacket and pull it on - shoving her wand into the inside pocket. The symbol, despite being made purely of magic, doesn't burn or chill her skin as she holds it. If anything it feels like she's holding nothing - simply moving a finger is all she needs to do in order to confirm.

Meissa just barely closed the door behind her when she hears her name being called - prompting her to turn towards the sound. Near by the fencing, standing next to the tree marking the furthest point away from the house. It's an old tree, with what appears to be a swing set tied to one of its branches, stands as a testament against time. It actually makes her wonder how many generations of Grangers did the tree witness throughout time.

One of the Grangers in question is currently waving at her, wordlessly beckoning her to join her. Daphne, at this time, is nowhere to be seen. Judging from the size of the tree's trunk it wouldn't be too far fetched to believe that the blonde Slytherin may be on the other side of the tree.

It's still unclear to her what kind of tree it is. An Oak tree perhaps?

She files away the question and jogs over to the pair, the symbol gradually growing warmer the closer she got to the tree.

"Wow," she proclaims once she's closer to Hermione. "How old is she?" she touches the rough surface of the trunk, the symbol flowing from her hand into the tree. She can sense something changing in the property of the tree - as if the magic of the ward has changed something fundamental about it.

"I don't know," Hermione hummed in response, "I think mum said it's been here since the day grandma bought the house in the 1800s?"

"Wow," Meissa mutters. Nearly two hundred years old if not older. There's something special about that in her opinion. It's probably not as old as the many other trees can be. "So how did you find her?" she asks, idly tracing the pattern that the rune circle will have to take.

"It wasn't too hard," Daphne pipes up, walking around the trunk to join them. "They have something like the _Point Me_ spell," she adds, her eyes widening just a smidge as she says this. "It does begs the question though: did the _Point Me_ spell come first or the compass?"

"Mm… we'd have to research when either one was invented," Hermione remarks with a gleam in her eyes.

"Yay," the blonde mutters sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

"Oi," Hermione pokes Daphne in retaliation, instantly getting a flinch from the other girl.

"So that makes four," Meissa mutters, ignoring them as the Gryffindor capitalized on Daphne's reaction and pokes another spot.

Daphne twist away from Hermione, putting Meissa between them, gripping the raven haired girl's shoulders to hold her in place. Meissa's gaze bounce between the two of them, from Daphne's grumpy expression to Hermione's innocent look.

"You are absolutely ridiculous," she declares at them, getting indignant huffs from the pair.

"Excuse you!" Daphne exclaims, releasing her grasp on the raven haired girl's shoulders.

Meissa uses this chance to slip away, laughing.

She can come back later to etch the runes but she can say, at the very least, that she can feel the beginning of the wards forming. The power of the nexus providing the basis of the wards. The runes she will later on draw will reinforce the boundaries of the wards but it seems like everything is proceeding well enough.

"Do you want to go do something else?" she suggests, turning to face them as they follow her.

"What about the runes?"

"It's not that important right now," she waves off as Hermione wraps her sweater tighter around herself.

"Well, we could go to the library," Hermione suggests, brushing back a strand of her hair. "I'll have to give my parents a call just to make sure they don't get too worried."

"There is not anything else to do?" Daphne questions doubtfully. "We all but lived in the library at Hogwarts - it'd be nice to get away from books."

"She does have a point," Meissa remarks. "Books are awesome but you should relax."

"I wasn't the only one practically living in the library," the Gryffindor huffs at her.

"Shh - we don't talk about that." This got a half laugh from the blonde that was promptly ignored by Meissa. "What else is there to do?"

"Mm… the park?"

The Slytherins exchange glances before unanimously agreeing to give the park a try. With that decided Hermione ran in to give her parents' practice a quick call - ultimately leaving a message for the secretary to deliver once one of them is free.

Daphne brush up against the slightly taller girl - touching but keeping it light enough to prevent a freak out. It was the most she feels comfortable to do with the revelation they've had the day before.

They still don't have an answer as to what happened or why it happened. Meissa still has no recollections of being at the zoo. Has no idea of how carefree she had behaved - in hindsight maybe that carefree behavior should have been a clue. There's a lot of questions up in the air that has the blonde questioning many things.

Chief among them was the events in the last week of their semester.

The sheer desperation to get her wand back - _deep gravel grating voice, open rage in usually friendly eyes_ \- is only the tip of the iceberg in regards to the other's temper. She has never witnessed the outbursts herself but it always - in some way or form - in retaliation to a form of bullying.

It'd be a lie if she said that she doesn't know how Meissa's intense dislike of bullying started.

The lack of social awareness - _Frére Jacques, frére Jacques, dormez-vous, dormez-vous? Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines_ \- and the… change in demeanor. There's no other way to put that into words - at least not yet. She wonders if keeping it to themselves was a good idea - wouldn't have informing one of the professors been a better idea at the time? Or at least send a letter to Professor Snape.

She feels torn into two opposing directions on this. Handling this seems like something they need to keep to themselves. While, involving an adult would probably be the better method of resolving the situation sooner.

"Hey." Daphne stumbles as a shoulder bumps into her, startling her out of her thoughts and back into the moment. She turns narrowed eyes to a sheepish looking Meissa. "Sorry."

The blonde lets a soft huff escape before she returns the bump in revenge.

"So…" she looks at the taller girl as she draws out the 'o', "what were you thinking about?"

"You."

"Uh…. Good?"

She covers her mouth to cover the smile forming on her lips. Meissa looks so baffled by this that she can't help the fondness bubbling in her.

"Ready!" Hermione bounces down the steps, tugging on a peacoat with her hair clipped back from her face.

"Wand?" the Slytherins ask in union. A blank look appears on Hermione face before she rolls her eyes.

"This again?"

"A witch shouldn't go anywhere without her wand," Meissa recites. Daphne wordlessly points at Meissa in agreement.

"You two are unbelievable," the Gryffindor huffs as she turns around, presumably to retrieve her wand from wherever she stashed it.

"When do you think we'll manage to get her into the habit of carrying her wand all the time?" Meissa wonders, wrapping her coat tighter around herself. She doesn't really feel cold - it'd be cliché to say that she doesn't get cold easily but it'd be close to the truth.

"I'd give it a year," Daphne remarks, idly rubbing her palms against one another.

"Six months."

The blonde Slytherin gives her a long look before a sly grin appeared on her face. "Winner gets a prize of their choice?"

"Of course."

Meissa snickers slightly before she carefully blanks her facial expression just as Hermione came bounding out with a peacoat already buttoned up, a set of keys jingling in her hand. She pauses long enough to do something with the door before she joins them.

"So where's the park?" Meissa asks, shoving her hands into her coat's pockets.

Hermione wordlessly points down one side of the road.

~MJB~

The park is fairly large, with kids running around huge play equipment and parents sitting off to the side chatting with one another. The equipment were decent sized for the younger kids, but for a few teenagers, they weren't so big.

"So, there's the slide, monkey bars…"

"How about we start with your favorite?" Daphne suggest as Meissa stares at their surroundings. Hermione and Daphne were keeping a concerned eye on the raven haired girl - the pair are concerned that the park has a potential to trigger an episode.

So far, Meissa seems to be content to watch the children running and climbing all over the play equipment.

Hermione went over to the playhouse, easily bounding up the steps with the others not that far behind her. Meissa pauses to peer through the dome - blinking at how things look distorted. A little girl, maybe eight years old with her hair in pig tails, stopped next to her.

"You're really pretty."

Meissa, not expecting the compliment, simply blinks at the girl before a small smile appeared on her face.

"Thank you. You're very pretty too."

"My name's Paige! What's your name?"

"Meissa."

"Me-s-ah?"

A slight laugh escaped Meissa's throat before she could stop it. "That's not quite it," she teases the pouting girl. "Want to try again?" she asks with a slight smile as Paige crosses her arms stubbornly at her.

"Mess-ah?"

"Almost there."

"Meissa!" they hear before Daphne joins her. "Oh, hi."

"Daph, this is Paige," Meissa introduces, "Paige, this is Daphne, one of my best friends."

"Wow… you're really pretty."

"She is," Meissa agrees in a sage like voice.

"Don't encourage her!"

"Why not?"

"Because - because I said so!"


	22. Monkey Bars

Chapter 22 - Monkey Bars

July 6th, 1992 (Monday)  
Location: Hyde Park

She exchanges looks with Paige at Daphne's outburst. "What do you think?"

The eight year old put on a show of thinking about it before she stuck her tongue out at the blonde. "You are really really really really really -"

"How many really can you say?" Daphne exclaims as the girl kept going.

"Really really really really"

"A lot apparently," Meissa chuckles in amusement.

"Really really really really"

"What's going on?"

"Pretty!"

"Thirteen," the raven haired girl remarks, having actually counted, "face it Daph, you're pretty."

The blonde rolls her eyes at her before she turns to Hermione who was looking at the two of them with an exasperated expression on her face.

"Do something about this!"

"I don't even know what happened," Hermione comments.

"Daphne doesn't want to accept that she's really really really -."

"No - no, not that again."

"Pretty!"

"I think you should just accept it at this point, Daph."

"That's not the issue at all," the blonde huffs at the raven-haired girl.

"Then what is it?"

"The fact that you're encouraging a kid to compliment me."

"Am I encouraging you?"

"What's encouraging?"

"It means someone is telling you should do something," Hermione chimes in helpfully.

"Oh. No, she's not."

Paige completely misses the smug grin Meissa flashed at the huffy blonde.

"Paige!" Meissa turns her head to look for the source as the girl perks up at the voice. As far as she can tell, it's a woman with her hair tied up in a somewhat messy bun. There's a resemblance between the girl and the woman so she pegs her to be the girl's mother. "Time to go!"

"Aw!" the girl runs to the railing, peering through the bars at the woman, "I want to stay longer, mum!"

"We have to go pick up your big sister now."

"Aww," the girl pouts before she turns to Meissa. "Bye!" she waves excitedly before she runs off, going down one of the slides with a short 'wee'.

"She was interesting," Hermione remarks, watching as the girl joins her mom.

"Mhm." Meissa got back to her feet, grinning mischievously at Daphne, "She's also right."

"OI!" Daphne exclaims. Laughing, Meissa took off as she takes a page from Paige's book, sliding down the slide before she ran for the hills with the blonde hot on her heels.

Hermione shook her head at the duo before she went after them, shouting at Daphne to go left as she went right to corner Meissa.

~MJB~

Hermione's shoes dig into the sand as she pushes herself back and forth on the swing, her eyes half closed as she takes in the sounds of the playground. It's not as crowded anymore - she has to guess that the parents have taken the kids someplace else - maybe to pick up the older kids from school. Meissa was still exploring the playgrounds - so far she's finding a great deal of amusement from the spring riders.

"Hey," she hears Daphne call her over from underneath the monkey bars, "What are you supposed to do with these?"

It was fortunate that there weren't many kids around at the moment - that would've gotten a lot of comments from the younger kids.

'You don't know how to monkey?' would probably be one of the more popular comments.

With a small huff she leaves her seat on the swings and went over to Daphne, being joined by Meissa shortly afterwards.

"The easiest way to do it is," Hermione starts to climb up the ladder and then over the top rung until she could reach the bars, "Well, watch." She grasp the first rung and, after making sure she has a good enough grasp, push herself off the ladder and then quickly swung herself forward. She probably made it halfway across before she dropped back down to the ground. "Easy!"

Meissa narrowed her eyes at the bars before she quickly scaled the ladder, mirroring Hermione. She barely got past four rungs before she ended up stalling and lost her grip. Unlike Hermione she didn't absorb the impact and fell completely onto her butt with a startled 'oof'.

"Easy?" Daphne asks with an arched eyebrow, looking at the Gryffindor.

"Sort of?"

"Sure," Meissa grumbles, picking herself up and brushing off the sand from her butt.

"Well, I've done it a few times growing up but it might be easier if you took it a bit slower."

"If I went any slower I would be going backwards."

"It takes a lot of effort to get good at this," Hermione attempts to reassure the grumpy Slytherin while Daphne peers at the monkey bars.

"Can I make an attempt?" she asks as Meissa rubs her hands. She gets a wordless gesture from the other girl so she goes over and climbs up to the bars. She tries to mimic what Hermione has done, grasping the bar. However, instead of going as fast as the Gryffindor had she decides to take it slow. Move one hand forward and then brings the other one forward to the same bar.

Daphne made it about the same point as Hermione before it got too much for her arms and hands so she lets go. She manages to stay on her feet as she rubs her hands against her trousers. It actually hurts to do that. Her forearms actually feel a little tender now.

Now Meissa was really grumpy - she wants to do better now.

She climbs back up the ladder and decides to take Daphne's approach to the bars.

Off to the side, Hermione was silent rooting for Meissa - mostly because, they'd never hear the end of it if Meissa doesn't manage to get at least half way like they've managed. She not only manages to get half way but most of the way across before her grip on the bars is too hard to maintain. With a disgruntled noise she lets go and is able to stick the landing this time around.

"That's… hard," she remarks, rubbing her hands together before she rubs her forearms.

"But you did much better this time around," Hermione points out.

"Much better than both of us."

"I vote we do this every day."

" _Every_?" Hermione grimaces at the thought of that - it'd be brutal on their upper bodies.

"Yeah."

"It's not going to be easy."

"Anything worthwhile wouldn't be easy."

Daphne glance between the two of them. This promises to be interesting. Meissa had an excited look on her face, she was definitely enjoying the thought of the impending exercise. Hermione didn't look at all pleased with the prospects of this.

"Exercising isn't easy," Hermione reminds her firmly.

Meissa just gives her a large grin before turning around with a cheerful whistle. Hermione rolls her eyes at the other girl's antics, sighing as Daphne pats her on the back. There's nothing that could be said to ease the fact that come high or hell water, Meissa will have them doing some kind of exercise.

~MJB~

"So… what are we doing tomorrow?" Meissa asks, walking backwards as she spoke.

"Mm, well, my parents want to go to the movies this weekend so that's out," Hermione remarks.

"We could knock off a few more of the movies," Daphne chimes in, reaching out to tap Meissa. Signaling for her to adjust her path to allow for a couple to pass them.

"We watched, uh…" Meissa stumbles as she tries to remember what they watched the other night.

"Robin Hood."

"Yeah that."

"What else did we pick that night?" Daphne taps her chin as she thinks about it.

"I remember seeing 101 Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramps, and Cinderella among the movies picked that night."

"Songbird!"

The trio turn at the shout - it wasn't the name, Meissa and Daphne were only just getting used to hearing that, that made them react. It was the frantic tone in Mr. Granger's voice that has them looking.

"Dad?"

"The house is gone!"

"What?!"

The witches dropped everything and broke out into a dead run to the frazzled Grangers - their car parked crookedly in the driveway. Henry looks absolutely disheveled - it looks like he's been running his hands through his hair often. He does look extremely stressed out so that's no surprise. Jean, on the other hand, looks rather calm in comparison. She has a slight exasperated look on her face - it's unclear if it's in response to the situation or a result of Henry's stress.

Meissa crosses her arms as she stares at where the house should be.


	23. Abracadabra

Chapter 23 - Abracadabra

July 6th, 1992 (Monday)  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

Meissa glance at Daphne, getting a slight shrug from the other girl.

"Dad, I -," Hermione looks back and forth between the house and her father. "The house-?"

"The house is still there, Mr. Granger," Meissa continues when Hermione hesitated to say any more.

"What-?"

Daphne nudges the raven haired girl's shoulder as she leans in to whisper, "Does this have to do with your runes?" She gets a wordless shrug from the other girl.

"So, you girls can see the house still?" Jean asks as she straightens her clothes, shutting the door to the car.

"Yes," Hermione confesses awkwardly. "I don't know what's happening through…" She glances over at Meissa who has a suspiciously blank look on her face. "Uh, give me a moment." She grabs Meissa by the hand and tug her off to the side for a bit of privacy.

"Fess up."

"What?"

"Don't act innocent."

"It's no act."

"The runes - what are they supposed to do?"

"Um…"

"Meissa!"

She puts up her hands in a placating motion. "Easy, easy - they're keyed to you. You decide what happens and I guess some part of you barred them from the house because I can't think of any other reason why the house would be hidden."

Hermione groans as she drags her hands down her face.

"Why would you do this?"

"This is Meissa we're talking about," Daphne chimes in, finally joining the conversation.

"Oi."

"You know it's true."

"Meissa," Hermione narrows her eyes at her friend the longer this was dragged out.

"Look - there's not a business out there that will ward the house of a non-magical couple," Meissa starts to explain carefully. "I should have asked, I know and I apologize - but…"

Hermione sighs as she rubs the bridge of her nose. "Okay, how do we fix this? Because I get what you were trying to do but it doesn't serve us any good when said 'non-magical couple' can't even see their own home."

"Er… trial and error?" Meissa suggests, quickly dodging out of the way when Hermione swats at her for the comment.

"That's not helpful!"

"It's the best I can do right now!" Meissa defends. "I don't know where everything went wrong."

"You said it's keyed to Hermione," Daphne interrupts before Hermione could swat at the brunette again. "What did you mean by that?"

"She's - well, I made it so that she decides who is welcomed and who isn't?"

"You did or you didn't."

"At this point I don't even know." Meissa gestures to the house. " _This_ wasn't supposed to happen."

"Oh my god, Meissa-."

"Girls," Jean interrupts, having somehow manage to sneak up on them during their 'talk'. "Deep breaths, please."

Hermione lets a low groan escape before she did as her mum bid, the tension visibly exiting her body as she did so. Meissa frowned grumpily, mentally reviewing the rune arrays to discover what went wrong - if anything did go wrong. She's confident that the current issue is actually not the runes but something connected to the Gryffindor.

"Now," Jean resumes once the trio's tension has gone down just a bit, "what seems to be the problem?"

"It's my fault," Meissa confesses, "I had a few sketches left out and… it seems that the latent magic has reacted to them." She steadfastly ignores the side eye she gets from her fellow Slytherin.

"Latent magic?"

"There's magic everywhere," Hermione starts softly, giving Meissa a somewhat exasperated look - even if it somewhat looks fond. It would seem like Meissa will eventually be out of the doghouse - so to speak.

"We use our core magic," Daphne adds, "for everything. But, like what Hermione said, there's magic everywhere. Latent magic isn't a branch that can be easily used but -," the blonde looks at Meissa who was looking at something in her pocket notebook, "it seems one of Meissa's sketches did this."

"How do you propose we fix this?"

"Um," Hermione stalls as she tries to come up with a decent answer.

"Working on it," Meissa muttered distractedly before she grabs the Gryffindor's hand. "Excuse us!"

Without further ado she pulls the other girl onto the property - causing them to disappear from the Grangers' point of view.

"Pardon us - we'll try and fix this as soon as possible," the blonde nods her head slightly before she steps onto the property, disappearing just like the others.

Jean turns to her frazzled husband, wrapping an arm around him as she tries to comfort him.

~MJB~

Meissa was leaning against one of the shelves as Hermione stares at the rune circle burned into the ceiling.

"How…"

"I think you and I both how," Daphne remarks as she maintains eye contact with the raven haired girl. "Question is, how did you manage to do this without getting an owl from the Improper Use of Magic…"

Meissa twists around the ring on her finger before sighing.

She didn't think she'd have to tell so soon - but, it'd benefit them to know… right?

"Right now, for the duration of our time here, this property is exempt from the Improper Use's monitoring," she admits as she withdraws her wand.

Hermione immediately looks at her. She points a finger at Meissa, has every intention of saying something, but pauses as she remembers that right now she has two stressed out parents who would very much like to enter their very own.

"We'll get back to that later," she promises sternly - a slight chill went down Meissa's spine at this.

"Great," Meissa grins as she points her wand to the rune circle. "Now, go stand underneath that."

"Should I be worried?"

"Hermione, I'm actually offended," she glares at the Gryffindor.

"To be fair, you did basically lock out Hermione's parents."

"Oi."

"Don't you 'oi' her," Hermione huffs as she did as she was bidden.

"I'm telling you, the wards are keyed to you," Meissa rolls her eyes as she opens the notebook to the appropriate page. "Right so… _Suscito_ ," she intones carefully as she twirls her wand in a tight circle. The runes light up in a soft white glow - there's a slight welcoming sensation from the circle. _"Qui receperunt revelare."_ This time she did a slight diagonal slash motion. Three after-images appeared and the group ends up staring at mirage like reflections of themselves. (1) (2)

"Uh…?" Hermione looks between the mirages and Meissa, confused and slightly concerned about what this could mean.

Meissa squints at her notes, muttering to herself as she deciphers her own writing.

"What does this mean?" Daphne asks softly when the silence stretched on long enough.

Meissa gestures to the mirages, "According to my notes… this should represent those accepted into the wards…"

"Should."

Meissa gives them the stink eye at the dubious tone. "I know I messed up but," she gestures between the two of them as she scowls at them, "that's not helping at all."

"Sorry."

She huffs at them as she returns to her notes, flipping through the notebook for the inspiration of the ward scheme. In the first few pages she has a brief summary of the ward scheme she based her rune circles on - all of which came from the book on wards she brought along.

"I still stand by what I said earlier," Meissa remarks as she skims through the notes. "We're probably already accepted because, when I did the initial set up, you had subconsciously already acknowledged that we were here on the property."

"My parents are literally at the driveway - I know they're there but they still don't see the house - I haven't heard them enter the house yet," Hermione starts headedly, "Do you have any other suggestions besides that?!" Meissa lowers the book slowly as she gives the irritated Gryffindor a deadpan look.

Daphne bit her lip as she did her best to stifle her laughter at them.

"How about we try what Meissa suggested?" the blonde finally suggests when the urge to laugh calms enough for her to speak uninterrupted.

Hermione groans as she pinches the bridge of her nose. "How?" she finally asks, her shoulders slumping slightly.

"Try welcoming them into the house?" Daphne suggests helpfully.

"They can't see the house."

"Then try mentally welcoming them into the house?" Meissa tries, ducking behind her notebook when she gets a look promising retribution later on. She then excuses herself from the cellar to go and check on the Grangers - mostly to get away from Hermione's immediate line of sight to let her cooldown just a little.

She makes a quick exit to the driveway, finding the Grangers standing in the driveway, not quite staring at her but looking in the general direction of the house. The second she stepped past the fence their gazes immediately locked onto her.

"No progress still?" Jean asks gently, offering her a slight smile.

"We've hit a snag," she smiles sheepishly, her hands shoved into the pockets of her trousers. "Right now it depends on 'Mione but… she's all fired up about how this all happened."

"Ah, and I suppose it's making things more difficult?" Jean asks with a knowing look.

Meissa shrugs as she rocks back and forth on her feet. "It's a process."

~MJB~

Notes:

1) Suscito - Awaken

2) Qui receperunt revelare - to reveal those who gladly received this


	24. Houston, We Have a Problem

Chapter 24 - Houston, We Have A Problem

July 6th, 1992 (Monday)  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

Meissa rubs her hands together as she watches Henry pace back and forth. Her mind is constantly reviewing the runes and the circles - questioning if maybe she did botch up somewhere. It'd be arrogant of her to proclaim that she didn't mess up - something of this magnitude, it was a miracle that they weren't immediately injured for entering the property.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" Jean asks, putting arm around Meissa's shoulders.

"Yeah… I'm sorry about this whole mess."

Jean looks at the raven haired girl before she begins to run her fingers through Meissa's hair in an effort to comfort her. "I'm sure you didn't mean for any of this to happen."

"I…I just wanted to protect everyone."

"Nothing wrong with that, hun."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Meissa crosses her arms, all but hugging herself as she leans into Jean.

"Songbird!" Henry exclaims, drawing their attention back to him and to the fact that Hermione and Daphne have stepped into view. "Anything?"

"I…" she glances at Daphne, "Welcome home, dad." Her words are tentative and unsure. She's not entirely sure how well this plan will go but it's worth a try.

Underneath Jean's arm, Meissa holds her breath, hopeful that this will work. Because she's not sure how to undo the damage done if this fails.

Henry's tense shoulders slowly relaxes as the house came into view for him. "That worked, Songbird," he wraps his arms around her in a tight hug. "I can see the house again."

"That's great news, hun," Jean smiles as she smooths down Meissa's hair. She watches as her daughter tries to make eye contact with the girl beneath her arm. She's not entirely sure about the reason for the tension between the two girls but until it proves to be disastrous to their friendship, she'll stay out of it.

"Mum," Hermione wiggles out of her father's grasp and throws her arms around her mother. Meissa just barely managed to escape the sudden hug, going over to stand next to Daphne while they wait this out.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" Daphne asks softly, having noticed that Meissa's mood has taken a hit.

"Could be better," Meissa shrugs as she straightens her shirt and jacket. "I'm kind of ready for today to be over."

"What did you hope to accomplish with this?"

Meissa waves a hand carelessly, wordlessly indicating she didn't intend to answer the question.

"Thank you, hun, I can see the house now," they overhear Jean say, smoothing back her daughter's hair as Hermione finally released her hold on her.

Meissa, sensing that the immediate issue has been resolved, instantly made a bee-line for the door - disappearing up the stairs before Hermione could say anything.

"I…I messed up," Hermione sighs, reluctantly meeting Daphne's eyes.

"At least it doesn't have to be mentioned," she remarks idly as she pats the Gryffindor's shoulder, offering a small token of sympathy. Hermione groans slightly as she follows her parents and Daphne into the house.

~MJB~

Daphne frowns as she looks at the ceiling - she hasn't seen Meissa since she ran up the stairs and there's a very small part of her that's concerned about the fact that it's extremely quiet. Usually when the other girl is upset about something there's typically a giant mess to clean up afterwards. It's actually nearing supper and the Grangers have talking about ordering out.

"I'm going to check on Meissa," she tells Hermione before slipping away.

The closer she got to the second floor the more she became disturbed by the silence.

She's not sure which is worse - Meissa's already had her big blow up and is in a near comatose state or she's building up to a massive blow up. Neither one is exactly a favorable outcome.

With a concerned frown she knocks on the door to the guestroom, pausing long enough for Meissa to give a response - which she did not - before pushing open the door. The fact it swung open so easily reassures her by a small margin.

The small lamp on the nightstand is the only source of light in the room, revealing that Meissa is sitting crossed legged on the bed with papers and tomes strewn around her. On her lap is the little notebook she's been carrying around with her and she's scribbling like a maniac.

"Meissa…?" Daphne slowly shuts the door behind her as she cautiously steps further into the room. Now that she has a better look of the whole room, she can see that even more paper on the floor - some balled up, some torn into shreds, and others were simply tossed aside.

"Mm?"

Meissa didn't even look up from her scribbles, pausing briefly to peer at a page in the tome she's reviewing.

"How are you feeling?" She doesn't like that this feels not that different from some of the fall outs they've gone through a few times. There's a lot of things wrong with the possibility of going through another one.

"Not really feeling anything." At first reflection it'd be easy to agree that Meissa isn't feeling anything. But the way her shoulders are hunched up defensively tells a whole other story. The slight tremor in her voice is a fair giveaway as well.

"Meissa…" She reaches over and place a hand on the other girl's, all but forcing her to actually look at her.

She's not surprised at all that Meissa would flinch away from the contact.

"… Leave it."

"No." She clears a spot on the bed before sitting down, carefully folding her legs beneath her as she faces her friend. "I won't."

Meissa glares at her as she scoots back, her eyes a little bit red and her cheeks shined just a smidge in the light. All of this, Daphne has no intention of mentioning to Meissa or Hermione - no one will ever know that she has seen the proud Black with her walls crumbling.

She doesn't want to give Meissa any reasons to build up those walls to keep her out.

"Why - I. I don't want to -," Meissa clears her throat, her voice slightly rough, "Just leave it be."

"No, not when it bothers you this much." Daphne leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees, "Is it because of how 'Mione reacted?" A frown appeared on Meissa's face. "Because the Grangers' got locked out?" The frown deepened and Meissa's head turned down - most likely pressing her chin against her chest. She hesitates, wondering if it'd be a good idea to say this next bit.

"Because you botched up?"

Meissa's head snaps up and a look of raw animosity flash its way across the other girl's face.

It didn't stay for long - barely a 'blink and missed it' moment - but it was enough to unsettle Daphne. It's a faint reminder of the early days of their friendship. When there's a constant push and pull between them - the good days and the bad days.

She has crossed a line.

"Bugger off," Meissa bit out before effortlessly sliding off the bed.

"Meissa - wait," Daphne follows after the fast moving girl, "Look - I'm sorry but -."

"NO!" Suddenly Meissa was in Daphne's face, dark eyes blazing. "I know that I'm not perfect - but both of you - harping on me, on the mistake I made - THAT DOESN'T HELP JACK!" The blonde flinch back at the scream.

"Girls? Is everything okay up there?" Henry's voice floated up to them and out of the corner of her eye, Daphne can see him at the base of the stairs, peering up at them. She hadn't realized they've gotten to the stairs.

She scarcely has the time to think of a reply before Meissa's flying down the stairs and -

Bloody hell.

"Meissa!"

She's down the stairs and out the door faster than she could think, chasing after Meissa who is running without shoes.

She's running without shoes.

"Meissa, stop!"

"Daphne!"

How is it that Meissa can run for so long?

There's a stitch in her side and her breath keeps coming in short pants - gasps really at this point. She can't even see the other girl anymore. Her dark clothes is too much of a help at this point of the night.

"Daph, what happened?"

She'll answer that… when she can breathe.

She points a finger between them as she presses a hand against her side. It doesn't help but it beats being doubled over. The puzzled look on Hermione's face doesn't clear up.

"She's…" Daphne groans as she shifts her weight to relieve the ache in her feet, "she's mad about earlier. Among other things."

Hermione sighs as she drags a wary hand down her face.

"I should've said something sooner," the Gryffindor finally mutters, her shoulders slumping as she accepts that delaying her apologies may have caused this.

"That probably would've helped," the blonde agrees evenly, idly rubbing her side. She still feels short of breath but they'd need to find Meissa soon. "Any idea where Meissa would've gone?"

"I don't know. Dad has gone looking too - Mum stayed home just in case Meissa finds her way back." Hermione looks around thoughtfully. "Maybe to a place she'd be familiar with?"

"We've barely been staying here for two days," Daphne points out. "Your house," she holds up an index finger, "the zoo," she extends her middle finger, "and the park." She extends her ring finger as well.

"Maybe the park?"

"It's worth a try."


	25. Azrael

Chapter 25 - Azrael

July 6th, 1992 (Monday)  
Location: Hyde Park

It doesn't take them terribly long to reach the park - not quite a hop and a skip but it wasn't like it's on the other side of the town. Hermione finds it a little eerie to be in the park with no one else around - the lack of excited screams and shouts of other kids were distinctly absent so late at night. The sun's been long gone at this point and the chill was only just beginning to settle in.

There's a few lights here and there to keep the park from being completely shrouded in darkness. Yet, at the same time, it made locating their friend just a tad difficult because what if she's not sitting out in the lit areas?

It'd be something Meissa would do - sit in the darkness while brooding.

"Should we try the playground first?" Daphne asks, rubbing her arms to warm herself up. She didn't have any foresight to grab a coat or a sweater before running after her friend.

It was also the first time either one of them spoke after agreeing to check the park for Meissa. Hermione was deep in the self-flagellation she's been running herself through for not offering her apologies sooner - or even getting mad at the other girl.

If there was another person privy to Hermione's thoughts - and a rational mature one at that - they would have told her that fighting was natural to a friendship and it's important to learn to apologize and recognize one's mistakes.

Unfortunately there was no one around who could take a look at Hermione's mind and so the Gryffindor stewed and berated herself.

"Hermione," Daphne tries again, giving the other girl a light tap, "where should we look first?"

"What - oh, maybe the monkey bars?"

Daphne nods slightly and started walking in the direction she thinks the bars are.

"Daph," Hermione waits until the blonde is looking at her before pointing in the literal opposite direction, "it's that way."

"Right, I knew that," the blonde made a 180 and started off once more, steadfastly ignoring the slight giggles from the other girl.

The closer they got to the bars the more transparent it became that Meissa was not there. Since they weren't too far from the rest of the playground they continued on.

It's hard to make out anything in between the glow of the lights and stars but they found no signs of Meissa at any of the equipment they've checked so far. The monkey bars was a bust. The swings as well. Spring rollers were as still as the night around them.

"Meissa!" Daphne calls out, biting her lip afterwards. It was easier to find her at Hogwarts.

" _I say,"_ they hear distantly, _"you and your life are gone. Innocent you are not - not for the lives you have ruined."_ It's not a voice they recognize. _"Mm… no - that doesn't work."_ Daphne glance at Hermione in confusion who was staring at the playhouse - the last place they've yet to check. _"You bloody wanker,"_ the voice shouts and now Daphne can hear the deep brass like quality to it, _"You will pay! Pound for pound!"_

" _Eh… lame."_ A shadow detach itself from the playhouse and they can see the familiar headful of curls despite the lack of color. _"You've ruined my life,"_ a hand extends and they can see the shape of a wand, _"I've spent_ _ **years**_ _trying to purge you and YOU KEEP CRAWLING BACK!"_

"Meissa?"

The shadow blurs for a second - they could only guess that initially Meissa's back was to them - before jumping down from the playhouse. Landing in a patch of light streaming from a nearby pole. Despite the poor quality of light they can see that it's their missing friend except something seems different.

" _Mm…"_ The tip of Meissa's wand begin to tap against the other girl's chin as she saunters - since when does she saunter - to them. _"You're important."_ She points to Daphne with the wand before she focuses on Hermione. _"You're… Important - angry with but important."_ The brunette shrugs her shoulders as if these were information that should make sense to them.

It didn't. Not to Daphne.

To Hermione… well, it made something click.

"What's your name?"

"Hermione - what," Daphne starts but was waved at by the Gryffindor while a slow smile began to form on Meissa's face at the question. It was a little peculiar in the way that it's not quite the smile the other girl would wear.

" _Mm, you're the first one to ask,"_ Meissa replies as she uncrosses her arms, her posture not quite relaxing but at least it doesn't look like she's ready to spring into a fight. _"I think I recall seeing a name I liked… what was it… ah. Azrael."_

Daphne was confused in more ways than one.

What. Is. Happening?

"Azrael," Hermione confirms tentatively, getting a cocky smirk from the raven haired girl. It still doesn't match the face they're used to.

" _Yes. Azrael at your service."_ There was an actual bow - elaborated, but a bow nonetheless - to accompany her words.

"Hermione - what, what's going on?"

Azrael/Meissa tsks at the Gryffindor as she did a 'shame on you' gesture. _"Hoarding all the information again, mm?"_

"I don't know much about it," Hermione confesses awkwardly. "I had hoped to read a little more about it before saying anything."

"How long were you sitting on this?"

"Barely a day, honest."

Azrael/Meissa shrugs her shoulders. _"I believe her. They were a little subtle when they left the book on the table this morning."_

"Who?"

"You mean my parents?"

" _Yes."_

"How did they even - I didn't say anything to them!"

" _None of you checked to make sure the door was closed all the way."_

Daphne groans softly in disbelief, thinking back to when they arrived at the Grangers' house after the zoo. That was the one and only time they spoke about Meissa's black outs.

"Wait… are you the source of all the black outs?"

" _Not all of them. Some of them are my fault, I'll admit to that."_

"… The fight with Pansy?" Azrael nods. "The train?" This got a no from the other girl. Two known moments when the other girl has for sure acted odd and one was caused by Azrael. "The zoo?"

" _Nope. I think Blake may have been the one for that."_

Hermione glance at Daphne who seems to be in deep thought.

"So," the blonde starts, her head tilting slightly, "that means Blake was also responsible for the train."

Hermione looks at her sharply, quickly thinking about the two moments Daphne referenced to. She sees what line of thought Daphne is following as she compares this to what she knows.

"Azrael," Hermione waits until the other girl acknowledges her. "What's your role?"

Azrael smiles slowly and, under the dim lighting of the park's lamps, her eyes glittered in a way that reminds Daphne of the hospital wing.

" _I am rage. I am anger. Justice is what I mete to those who deserve it."_ Azrael holds up her wand as the tip begins to glow darkly. _"I have protected what is mine for years - I have preserved what is to be preserved."_

"Even if it means hurting those who don't deserve to be hurt?"

The dark glitter in Meissa's eyes became even more pronounced at that.

" _Did we?"_

Daphne grabs Hermione at the dangerous tone. She vaguely remembers hearing it before - _Step aside_ \- and did not want to test what it means.

"Meissa."

" _Not here."_

"She is."

The glow at the tip of Meissa's wand became more pronounced.

" _She. Is. Not."_

Daphne tugs Hermione half behind her as she holds her ground.

"You say you mete out justice to those who deserve it," she may not understand what's happening, why Meissa is answering to the names of Azrael and Blake, but she understands that it's late. They're standing out in the middle of a playground, in the dark, and it looks like Meissa is on the verge of using magic. "There's no one, right this second, who needs justice meted out."

The glow continues to grow before it fades as a low laugh start to fill the night around them.

" _Now I know why,"_ Azrael remarks as she took a few steps back and plopped onto the steps leading up to the playhouse.

"Know what?"

She gets a careless wave as Azrael leans back, turning her gaze to the skies. With a long exhale, Azrael relaxed to the point they thought that she had actually fallen asleep. With a puzzled look at each other they took a few steps closer and got a knee jerk reaction of the raven haired Slytherin snapping up.

"Oi," Daphne press a hand to the side of Meissa's hand, pointing the wand away from Hermione and herself as the other girl's wide eyes took stock.

"Daph?"

"Yes." A low groan escapes Meissa as she rubs her forehead with a free hand. "How are you feeling?"

"Meh."

"That's a good way to sum that up," Hermione comments idly, getting a long side eye from the raven haired girl.

Daphne looks between the pair of them, silently assessing that things are still up in the air. In a lot of ways, that does make sense - nothing has been resolved despite the fact the last five to ten minutes have been extremely confusing.

"I'm sorry."

Daphne turns to Hermione before it registers that it came not from the Gryffindor but from her fellow Slytherin.

"For?" she asks tentatively.

"… Yelling at you." It shouldn't reassure Daphne that Meissa's reluctance to admit her faults were consistent. Yet, it did.

"Mm… I'm sorry too. For saying what I did. For not considering what you were feeling after all of that."

"Meissa," Hermione speaks up, digging a small hole in the sand with her foot. It'd be fair to say that Hermione was worried about Meissa's response. "I'm sorry… I shouldn't have lashed out at you… you were only trying to help and… I was taking out my frustrations on you. Can you forgive me?"

"… So long you can forgive me."

"Of course."


	26. Laws Are (Not) Meant To Be Broken

Chapter 26 - Laws Are (Not) Meant To Be Broken

July 7th, 1992 (Tuesday)  
Location: Granger's House - Heathgate, Hampstead

Meissa stares at the circle as she lays on her back, glancing between it and her notes. It matches up perfectly with what she has drawn from the tome. She'll need to check on the four points at some point but so far it doesn't seem like there's a legitimate reason for the ward to automatically block everyone unless welcomed in by the Heart. The incantations gave no clear answer as to the weirdness of the wards - she can safely say she followed the instructions to the letter.

Unless the tome didn't include some kind of vital information…

That's a venue she'll have to explore once she has the opportunity.

"Meissa!" she hears call down to the cellar. "Mail's here!"

"Okay! Be there in a mo!"

She picks herself up, taking a brief moment to dust off her clothes before heading up the steps.

"Find anything?" Hermione questions as she hands a small bundle of letters to Meissa, having retrieved them from the owls while Daphne fed them bread and water.

"Nope. Everything looks precisely how it should - according to my notes."

"Why can't we just bring in a professional?" the Gryffindor questions as Meissa takes a quick look at the names on the letters.

"Well," Daphne starts as she secures herself a bowl of cold cereal, "there's a few reasons. The Ministry regulates the wards - specifically wards on non-magical properties."

"What?"

"There's a law that states that a ward cannot be placed on the property owned by non-magicals. A very tiny loophole permits the ward being placed if a first generation - a muggleborn - is a minor resident," Daphne explains, placing the bowl in front of a pre-occupied Slytherin, nudging her slightly as she hands her a spoon.

"Okay - so, what's the issue?"

"The extreme rates," Meissa answers, putting aside the letters after the third nudge. "I think it's roughly a thousand Galleons for a non-magical to have the wards placed - granted, it'd be the basic ward to discourage burglars and nothing high powered like the ones on the Black estates." After the fifth nudge she accepts the spoon that's been poking her and starts on her cereal.

"Wait - how much is a Galleon equal to again?" Hermione injects.

"Mm… ten British Pounds?" Daphne looks at Meissa in askance. She gets a shrug from her lieu of an answer since she had a mouthful of cereal.

"Ten thousand pounds?!" Hermione shouts, startling the Slytherins. "It'd cost us ten thousand pounds just to do a basic ward?" she demands.

She was mad, furious really, and seconds from storming off to write a letter of complaint to the Ministry.

"For a muggleborn's family," Daphne grabs the Gryffindor by the shoulders to keep her in her seat, "that's the average price. It goes up another ten to twenty Galleon for every acre."

Hermione pauses as she turns partially to look at Daphne. "They add a fee for that?" she asks in low disbelief.

"Among other things," Meissa remarks once she has swallowed the food in her mouth. "There's also the worker's fee, renewal fee - you'd have to get it renewed every so often or else it'd just fail, and… Am I missing anything?" she looks at Daphne in askance.

"How much would it cost altogether?" Hermione mutters, blinking as her mind tries to process the extraordinary amount of money being exhorted.

"It'll probably be another five hundred if not a thousand on top of the wards itself." Meissa pauses to think it over. "So… close to two thousand galleons."

"That's…"

"Only for the first generations."

"What?"

"It's much cheaper for a pureblood to get their homes warded - a mid-level type of warding that is - in comparison to what you'd face to get your home warded," Meissa elaborates as she carefully watches Hermione's expression.

"… This is prejudice against non-magicals!" the Gryffindor exclaims loudly.

"No. Just against first gens."

The expression on the Gryffindor's face turns thunderous, prompting Meissa to move her bowl out of reach as a precaution.

"That's - what. Why," Hermione was fuming mad to the point where she couldn't speak clearly.

"I think you broke her," Daphne remarks from the safety of the kitchen island. Meissa shrugs in acknowledgement of this fact.

"How… how could it be so bad?" Hermione mutters dejectedly. "This is… prejudice - discrimination against -."

"Hermione," Meissa interrupts gently, drawing the Gryffindor's attention to her. "I know. We know," she keeps her voice mild as she maintains eye contact with the other witch. "I know that it's all bad - I can't promise that it'll get better but we can try." She glances at Daphne who gives her a long-suffering look before nodding. "All three of us can try to improve things not just for you but everyone else following in your footsteps."

Hermione frowns before nodding begrudgingly.

Meissa takes this opportunity to slowly return her bowl to the table.

It seems safe enough.

She shifts her chair a little to make room for Daphne, rubbing her face as she covers up the yawn attempting to force its way out of her. She doesn't really feel like eating but, at the same time, she doesn't feel like arguing with them.

"So," she looks back up to find Hermione frowning at her, "this whole thing was because of these… laws?"

She blinks tiredly before nodding.

"Yes," she groans and rubs her face in an attempt to wake up. "Sorry, yes, its because of the laws we've spoken about."

"So that's one of the things we need to change, right?"

"One of them yes."

"Does this mean we're going to be digging up books on archaic laws?" Daphne pipes up, poking Meissa with a spoon. "On top of the other laws?"

"Other laws?"

"Er," Meissa mock glares at Daphne for even mentioning it. "It's a side project."

"And…?"

"There's nothing promising yet."

"It'd probably go a lot faster if you were helping," Daphne remarks as she gets elbowed by the raven haired girl. "What! It's not like it was some grand secret!" the blonde huffs as she returns the elbow.

"You are both being mysterious," Hermione points out to them, scooping up another spoonful of her cereal.

"Not my intention," Meissa defends before sighing as she took in the determined look in the Gryffindor's eyes. "You just had to say something," she grumbles to the blonde.

"I stand by the 'go a lot faster' point."

"There's no point in saying anything right now when there's no proof - no evidence." Meissa pushes back her seat to go dump her bowl in the sink. "Besides, we didn't make much headway in our research so -."

"And what's the research on?"

"Child abuse."

"Daphne!"

"Meissa!"

Hermione glance between the two Slytherins, partially amused by their mutual exasperation with each other while still reeling from the casual drop from the blonde.

Child abuse.

That's - that's quite the subject to focus on.

It's a whole different level of systemic suppression of 'first generations' - as Meissa likes to say it.

"What on earth brought up that," she finally manages to say.

"Potter."

Hermione couldn't even try to respond to that as Meissa exclaims loudly from the sink.

"Daph!"

"Don't 'Daph' me," the blonde waves her spoon at her fellow Slytherin. If her parents saw her now, she'd get a hiding of the life time.

"I'm sorry," Hermione interrupts before they could start bickering. "Are you implying that Harry's being abused?"

Meissa huffs from her place at the counter while Daphne did a half shrug.

"Like Meissa said earlier, there's no proof or evidence," the blonde admits with Meissa agreeing with her audibly. "But there's… red flags - I think that's the right term?" Hermione nods her head hesitantly - she understood what she's trying to say.

"In any case, if he's not being abused, he's at least probably being neglected," Meissa injects, returning to the table with the bundle of letters.

"That's… well, I can't say I agree or disagree but - you'd need a lot of evidence for the non-magical courts to take it seriously," Hermione comments lightly.

"I thought as much," Meissa sighs. "Well, it's only been a month? Two months?" She checks with Daphne who only gave her a half shrug.

"Um…"

"Yeah?"

"When was the last time you've spoken to Harry?"

Meissa frowns and looks at Hermione before sharing a look with Daphne.

"The station."

"Same."

"…"

Meissa frowns at the worried Gryffindor.

"Have you asked Weasley?" she finally suggests. It was more likely Potter would keep in touch with him, right?

"Ron hasn't said anything - he indicated that he was getting the same silence too though."

"… Lovely," Meissa mutters as she rubs her forehead.


End file.
